Established in 1980; scholars of the Department of General Biology of the NAS of Ukraine are awarded the Prize for outstanding achievements in the field of horticulture, dendrobiology and floriculture
Levko Platonovych Symyrenko Prize
Upon graduating from a private gymnasium in Odessa, L.P. Symyrenko entered the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, but in 1874 he transferred to Kyiv to the Natural Sciences Department of Kyiv University, and later to Novorosiysk University, where he defended his thesis on organic chemistry and was awarded the prestigious academic degree of Candidate of Natural Sciences (1878). For the participation in the political movement (“Narodna volia” movement), he was banished to Eastern Siberia (Krasnoyarsk) for eight years; he worked there as a gardener (organizing the construction of greenhouses, growing decorative and fruit trees and grapes, acclimatizing some varieties, etc.), gaining practical experience.
In 1887, Symyrenko returned to his native Mliyiv and continued to engage in gardening, in particular, breeding and reproducing varieties of fruit and berry, decorative trees and bushes, and in floriculture as well.
On his own plot of land, he created a parental collection nursery, where he collected one of the largest pomological collections in Europe.
Thanks to active propaganda, the Mliyivskyi nursery became famous not only in Ukraine, but also far beyond its borders.
L.P. Symyrenko became the founder of a gardening school and a folk school for peasants in Mliyiv, where fruit growing was definitely studied; it was a significant contribution to the promotion of gardening in Ukraine.
Among the main scientific interests of Levko Symyrenko, it should be noted his work on the study and introduction into the domestic assortment of new high-quality varieties of fruit and berry crops (apple, pear, apricot trees, grape, etc.) of both domestic and foreign selection, the creation of his own varieties. In his research, the scientist paid significant attention to the issues of species biology, ecology and technical properties of varieties. Hence, it became possible to develop a fundamentally new system of growing seedlings and a whole range of agrotechnical techniques and measures, maximally adapted to the needs of each variety, which became the basis of practical horticulture and have not lost their importance to this day.
The scientist brought many innovations to the development of theoretical and applied issues of variety study and fruit and berry crop zoning.
The Renet Symyrenko apple variety, bred by him, received worldwide recognition.
In 1902, L.P. Symyrenko’s “General Catalog of Fruit Trees” was published, and in 1908 – “Crimean Industrial Tree”, which became desktop books for practitioners and theorists.
L.P. Symyrenko outlined his thirty-year experience in horticulture in his fundamental monograph “Pomology”, which was considered the best for a long time and went through several reprints.
Levko Symyrenko was a member of the Belgian Society of Horticulturalists, honorary member of the French National Pomological Society. He was awarded the Steven Grand Gold Medal and the medal of the French Society of Horticulturalists, the Petrograd Grand Gold Medal.
After L.P. Symyrenko’s death in 1920, the world-famous Mliyiv Horticultural Research Station was created on the basis of his nursery, which was named after the scientist in 1958. In 1989, the station was reorganized into the L.P. Symyrenko Mliyiv Research Institute of Horticulture, and in 2006 this institution was renamed the L.P. Symyrenko Institute of Pomology of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine. A street in Kyiv was named after L.P. Symyrenko.