Pustovoit Awards

History

The V.S. Pustovoit Award is the highest honour conferred to individuals working in the Sunflower Industry. To fully appreciate the significance of the Award, it is necessary to have some knowledge of the man after whom the Award was named.

In 1912, V.S. Pustovoit began his research work on fields crops in the Kuban region. Pustovoit was an outstanding breeder, a Lenin and State Prize winner, and a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

He worked out the technique of multiple individual selection from strains and intervarietal hybrids assessed for their offspring quality, with the subsequent induced and regulated transpollination of the best numbers.

In 1924, Krasnodar became the experimental selection centre for Russian oilseeds and in 1932 the V.S. Pustovoit All Union Research Institute was established to formalise the valuable work Pustovoit had done in the preceding years.

V. S. Pustovoit headed the Breeding Department of the Institute until his death in 1972.

Criteria and Rules

The Executive of the International Sunflower Association met at Versailles, France on October 23, 1979, during the biennial meeting of the FAO Research Network for Sunflowers. Present were the President, W.E. Sackston ; the Secretary, J.J.L. van Waalwijk van Doorn ; members of the committee, A. Cauderon and A. V. Vranceanu, the latter also a member of the Award Committee. N. Dvoryadkin and T. Vrebalov did not attend.

Among the items of business discussed were the criteria and rules for selecting the recipients of the highest recognition the International Sunflower Association (ISA) can bestow and the selection of people to be so honored at the Ninth International Sunflower Conference in Spain in June 1980.

In the framework of an Extraordinary Board Meeting, which took place in Paris on July 21st, 1999 and gathered the President, Felicity Vear ; the Secretary, André Pouzet and members : Jerry Miller and Past President, Gian Paolo Vannozzi, some details of the rules governing the award were agreed upon and determined as follows :

1. It is called : The International Sunflower Association V.S. Pustovoit Award.

2. The entire Executive Board will vote to determine awards. The Award itself consists of a metal plaque bearing the above designation, over the engraving of a sunflower in bloom bearing a map of the world on the disk portion.

The winner's name will appear in the lower portion of the plaque, and the date and place where it was awarded (the location of the appropriate International Sunflower Conference).

3. The Awards will be presented, and the citation for each winner will be read by a member of the the ISA Board during the International Sunflower Conference.

4. The Awards will normally be made every four years, to coincide with the International Sunflower Conference. If there are no suitable candidates, no Award will be made.

5. The Awards shall be made to persons, individuals or teams, not to Institutions.

6. There shall be a limited number of Awards conferred at any Conference, usually not to exceed four in number.

7. In the case when it is felt that a deceased scientist could have merited an award, a special dedication may be made.

The criteria used to select the winners are as follows :

1. Nominees for the Award shall have been active and productive in sunflower work for at least 10 years. Their contributions must have been scientific or technical, not administrative, and must have gained world-wide recognition.

The Award may be conferred for :
2. Outstanding contributions in theoretical or applied research in any field dealing with sunflowers (for example, but not limited to : genetics, breeding, physiology, chemistry, phyto-pathology, crop science,entomology, weed science, oil technology, etc.) which have stimulated the development of the sunflower crop and enriched the literature.

3. Development of agronomically superior high-oil varieties or hybrids, with improved yielding capacity, high quality oil and/or meal, good resistance to diseases and/or insect pests, and grown on large areas.

4. Major improvement of cultural practices such as fertilizer use, plant protection, weed control, seeding, tillage and harvesting methods and equipment ; and of processing methods and equipment.

5. Major contributions to the promotion of sunflower cultivation and processing in developing countries, thereby improving the agricultural productivity and ability to feed themselves of the people.

6. In special cases, the Award may be conferred for outstanding contributions to international cooperation in sunflower science and technology, and for making possible the interchange of ideas, information, documentation, germplasm and other materials.
Paris, July 26, 1999