Sugar Beets, Institute of

(full name, All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Sugar Beets of the Ministry of Agriculture of the USSR), a scientific and methodological center that coordinates the research done by scientific establishments on the growing and selective breeding of sugar beets. The institute was established in Kiev in 1922 and received its present name in 1945.

In 1975 the Institute of Sugar Beets had the following departments: organization of science and research, land cultivation, technology of the mechanized production of sugar beets and seeds, sugar-beet selective breeding and genetics, seed production, entomology, phytopathology, the economics and organization of beet production, the selective breeding and seed production of grains and legumes, and scientific and technological information—patenting, publishing, extension, and research and production. The institute has laboratories for seed-production research and the physiology, biochemistry, and anatomy of sugar beets.

The Institute of Sugar Beets has a North Caucasian branch in Krasnodar Krai and the following experiment-selective breeding stations: the Belotserkovskaia in Kiev Oblast, the Biisk in Altai Krai, the Verkhniachka in Cherkassy Oblast, the Veselo-Podolianskaia in Poltava Oblast, the Ivanovskaia in Sumy Oblast, the L’gov in Kursk Oblast, and the Uladovo-Liulinetskaia in Vinnitsa Oblast. The institute also has eight selective-breeding substations, ten experiment farms, 11 elite stock seed-growing sovkhozes, and the Trostianets Seed Factory.

The Institute of Sugar Beets and its affiliates carry out all the seed-production research on sugar beets in the Ukraine, supply seed to seed-production sovkhozes, and develop the technology used in cultivating the crop. The institute developed the world’s first monospermous beet (the research of O. K. Kolomiets and others). In 1974,25 beet varieties developed by the institute and its stations were regionalized; these varieties included the Ial-tushkovskii hybrid, the Belotserkovskii polyhybrid 1 and 2, the Uladovskaia monospermous 20, and the Verkhniachka 038.

The Institute of Sugar Beets has full-time and correspondence graduate study. It has published Trudy (Works) since 1923. The Institute of Sugar Beets was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1971.