Fedor Grigorevich Kirichenko

Born Feb. 17 (Mar. 1), 1904, in the village of Vladislavka, in present-day Mironovka Raion, Kiev Oblast. Soviet plant breeder. Academician of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1956). Hero of Socialist Labor (1958). Member of the CPSU since 1929.

Kirichenko graduated from the K. A. Timiriazev Maslovka Institute of Plant Breeding and Seed Growing in 1928 (village of Maslovka, Kiev Oblast). In 1932 he began working at the All-Union Institute of Plant Breeding and Genetics (in Odessa) as head of the wheat breeding and seed growing department (1932–41, 1944–54, and from 1959) and director (1954–59). Kirichenko developed a method for creating more winter-hardy interspecific wheat hybrids, and he improved the methods of selecting pairs in the interspecific and intraspecific hybridization of soft winter wheat. His research on developing a method for selecting agricultural plants for their well-developed root system is of particular value. Under the leadership and with the participation of Kirichenko, the institute has developed five high-yielding, winter-hardy, and drought-resistant varieties of soft winter wheat of the steppe ecotype (Odessa 3, Odessa 12, Odessa 16, Odessa 26, and Stepova). For the first time in the history of steppe farming, Kirichenko developed a winter durum wheat (the varieties Michurinka, Novomichurinka, and Odessa Jubilee); this wheat yields 35–45 centners per hectare.

Kirichenko is an honorary member of the Czechoslovak Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1961). He received the State Prize of the USSR in 1949 and the Lenin Prize in 1959. He has been awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, and three other orders as well as medals.