This is the story of an outstanding plant geneticist who wasdetermined to use modern science to rescue the starving citizensof his motherland from a series of frequent and severefamines but tragically fell prey to terrible socio-politicalchanges that eventually made himdie of starvation in a prison.This plant geneticist is Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, who madenumerous, far-reaching, original contributions to basic andapplied fields of genetics and agriculture. Some of his majorcontributions are the establishment of the largest seed bankin the world of his time, the idea of ‘homologous series inhereditary variations’, and the concepts of ‘centres of originof cultivated plants’ and of ‘genetic erosion’.