The current stage of VIR plant genetic resources collecting missions

N. I. Vavilov and his colleagues laid the scientific and practical foundations for the collection and introduction of global plant resources in all their diversity. N. I. Vavilov’s theoretical research on the centers of origin of cultivated plants, the geographic localization of specific genotypes, and the law of homologous series in hereditary variability became the theoretical basis for the mobilization of plant genetic resources by both VIR staff and many other plant resource researchers. Until the mid-1980s, solutions to many international problems in the field of plant genetic resources were largely in the hands of scientists. Then, the increasing geopolitical and economic instability, the restructuring of global financial, logistical, and production systems, and the so-called "seed wars", had a negative impact on agrobiodiversity mobilization and the previously free exchange of plant genetic resources. In this century, the climate change and the combined effect of its consequences (the rate of temperature increase, landscape transformation, and the frequency of new types of cataclysms), are most pronounced in temperate and northern latitudes. Given the geographical position of the Russian Federation, special attention should be paid to the exploration of genetic resources within the country and in neighboring countries in collaboration with their representatives. The purpose of this review is to examine the collecting explorations of VIR during its different periods, starting from the Bureau of Applied Botany up to the National Center for Plant Genetic Resources. Six stages are distinguished in the history of collecting explorations: Stage I, 1908–1920; Stage II, 1921–1940; Stage III, 1941–1953; Stage IV, 1954–1990; Stage V, 1991–2022; and Stage VI, 2023–2025. Each stage is analyzed in respect of the methodological approaches used to study and mobilize the diversity of cultivated plants and their wild relatives, the main results, and the factors that influenced the organization of collecting explorations. In total, the institute's staff conducted 1,676 collecting missions. Territories corresponding to modern regions of the Russian Federation have been covered by the routes of 589 collecting missions (38% of the total), still the degree of exploration of plant genetic resources in this country remains insufficient and requires further organization of large-scale collecting missions in the Russian Federation and in neighboring countries. These efforts are already underway within the framework of the currently implemented Program of Development of the National Center for Plant Genetic Resources.