Editing Trofim Lysenko (section)

==Life and career==
Trofim was born into a peasant family of [[Ukrainians|Ukrainian]] ethnicity in [[Karlivka]], [[Poltava Governorate]] (present-day [[Poltava Oblast]], [[Ukraine]]) on 29 September 1898.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=9475| title = Герои страны}}</ref>

As a young man working at the Kiev Agricultural Institute (now the [[National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine]]), Lysenko studied agriculture, working on various projects, one involving the effects of temperature variation on the [[biological life cycle|life-cycle]] of plants. Later leading him to consider how he might use this work to convert [[winter wheat]] into spring wheat. He named the process "jarovization" in Russian, and later translated it as "[[vernalization]]".<ref name="Graham">{{cite book |last=Graham |first=Lo-ren R. |url=https://archive.org/details/moscowstories00grah |title=Moscow Stories |date=2006 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-25-30007-43 |location=Bloomington, Indiana |pages=[https://archive.org/details/moscowstories00grah/page/120 120]–25, 290|url-access=registration}}</ref>

The conversion of winter wheat into spring wheat was not a new discovery. Scientific experiments had been done by [[Nikolai Vavilov]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Li |first1=X. |last2=Liu |first2=Y. |title=The conversion of spring wheat into winter wheat and vice versa: False claim or Lamarckian inheritance? |journal=[[Journal of Biosciences]] |volume=35 |issue=2 |year=2010 |pages=321–325 |doi=10.1007/s12038-010-0035-1 |pmid=20689187 |s2cid=10527354}}</ref> It was Vavilov who initially supported Lysenko and encouraged him in his work. Lysenko had a difficult time trying to grow various crops (such as peas and wheat) through the harsh winters. However, when he announced success, he was praised in the Soviet newspaper ''[[Pravda]]'' for his claims to have discovered a method to fertilize fields without using fertilizers or minerals, and to have shown that a winter crop of [[pea]]s could be grown in [[Azerbaijan]], "turning the barren fields of the [[Transcaucasus]] green in winter, so that cattle will not perish from poor feeding, and the peasant Turk will live through the winter without trembling for tomorrow."<ref name="LA">{{harvnb|Joravsky|1986}}</ref>

His experimental research in improved crop yields earned him the support of the Soviet leader [[Joseph Stalin]], especially following the [[Russian famine of 1921|famine]] and loss of productivity resulting from crop failures and [[Collectivisation in the USSR|collectivization]] in several regions of the Soviet Union in the early 1930s.