Shekhurdin, Aleksei Pavlovich

Born Mar. 10 (22), 1886, in the village of Bykovo, Urzhum District, Viatka Province (present-day Urzhum Raion, Kirov Oblast); died Mar. 1, 1951, in Saratov. Soviet plant breeder. Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1947).

Shekhurdin studied at the Aleksandrovo-Nartassy Agricultural School in Viatka Province from 1901 to 1904. He graduated from the Saratov Agricultural Institute in 1928. From 1904 to 1907, Shekhurdin trained at and then managed Professor I. A. Stebut’s farm in the village of Krotnoe, Tula Province. In 1911 he became a laboratory assistant at the Saratov Agricultural Experiment Station (now the Scientific Research Institute of Agriculture of the Southeast). Between 1920 and 1924 he developed several varieties of spring wheat, including Lutestsens 62, Al’bidum 604, and Gordeiforme 432. He became a professor in 1945. From 1946 to 1948, Shekhurdin worked in the subdepartment of plant breeding and seed raising of the Saratov Agricultural Institute. He was the first in the USSR to develop and apply to the breeding of grain crops the techniques of nonrelated and multiple complex hybridization.

A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR in 1942, Shekhurdin was also awarded the Order of Lenin and two other orders.