On March 16, in Samarkand, at the Faculty of Biology of Samarkand State University, the grand opening of the restored botanical greenhouse was held.

Cutting the red ribbon (from left to right): Diego Riviera, 3rd Secretary of the US Embassy, ​​Christopher Fronsek, Attaché of the German Embassy for Economic Cooperation, Ms. Anne Bowtie, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Switzerland to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan - representatives of the embassies who supported the project together with PROON andPMGEF .

After much effort, the work of the project team is complete. A project that began to rebuild a virtually critical greenhouse. Probably need to recall how it all began.

So, once I visited Samarkand. My friends - graduates of the biological faculty of SamSU decided to show me their faculty - the building itself, which is just a work of art in itself; a zoological museum and a greenhouse located on the territory of the faculty. The Zoological Museum was absolutely amazing. Even in Tashkent it is much worse. In my opinion. And the head of the museum is Bakhodir, just a wonderful storyteller and a very enthusiastic person. Be prepared to stay in its "claws" for at least an hour, but I recommend visiting the museum to everyone.

Then they took me to show the greenhouse. I was amazed at how deplorable it was. Although there is a lot of potential for both science and tourism. I started asking about the problems and told the guys that, by and large, the problems of the greenhouse clearly fit into the priorities of our program. And the guys began to work to help the native greenhouse of the native faculty. I think that the country should know its heroes. These are Maria Gritsyna, TimurAbduraupov, Laura Bozian and ShamilGareev. It was thanks to them that this project became possible.

The project was aimed at modernizing the greenhouse of Samarkand State University so that it could use the small amount of energy that is available and still fulfill its functions - to save a unique collection of plants, which serves as a basis for scientific work and for the dissemination of knowledge on the importance of the components of biodiversity ...

The greenhouse at that time was in a terrible state. Since its construction in 1969, the greenhouse has not been restored. The glass was cracked, there were cracks and holes all around, and of course the insulation of the greenhouse was very low. The boiler room is old, which wasted an awful lot of gas, but could not heat the greenhouse to the required temperature. In winter, the temperature reached 0 degrees. Of the 500 previously existing plants, only 250 are now preserved. In the summer, to avoid extreme temperatures, mud is simply applied to the glass on top to shade the greenhouse. In other words, the energy was wasted extremely irrationally.

The guys got down to work, wrote a project, began to look for funds from other donors, because the PMGEF funds were clearly insufficient. Yura Moon helped the Samarkand guys in this work. He was the first to go to the Swiss embassy. The ambassador - Mrs. Anne Bowtie - turned out to be a very helpful woman and delved into the problems of the greenhouse. It was the Swiss embassy that became the first embassy to support the project. It gave 15 thousand dollars for the purchase of a new boiler house, which is 3 times more economical than the previous one.

Then the German and American embassies joined, for which many thanks to them. Going ahead, I will say that at the opening ceremony of the German embassy attaché Christopher Fronsek said: "The role of our embassy in this project is the smallest." But I know that there was no small role or a big one in this project. If there was not at least one partner, at least one person, the project would not have taken place.

This winter was also very difficult for the greenhouse. Although all the work on the greenhouse was completed, no gas was supplied to the greenhouse at all, because there was practically no gas in the city itself. There is no need to hide this. There were indeed problems and it was difficult to show in full force how well the renovated greenhouse works. But one thing can be said - if not for the restoration, most of the plants would not have survived this winter. The new isolation has done its job. I would like to say a special thank you to all the builders who took part in the work. Special thanks to the project foreman, Denis Kuznetsov.

On March 16, all participants and partners of the project gathered to finally solemnly open the greenhouse. A welcoming speech was delivered by the rector of SamSU - Mr. U. Tashkenbaev. It should be noted that the help of the new rector gave a good impetus to the successful completion of all work. Thank you very much, Mr. Rector.

During the opening, there was a normal working atmosphere, everyone had fun and not bored listening to each other. The rector is at the head of the table.

After the official part and a presentation about the project, all the guests went to the greenhouse itself. The weather that day was not very pleasing - it was raining and it was pretty cool, but this did not spoil anyone's mood.

Guests are told about the future plans that the university has pushed for our project

After cutting the red ribbon, all the guests had the opportunity to personally get acquainted with the work of the project.

The guys did a good job here :))) "- the Germans and the Americans thought the same way ...

You can see everything that was done in the project in the presentation and a brief description of the project.

- Download project presentation

- Download a short excursion about the project

And I need to say a few words about the continuation of the work ...

This work was aimed at demonstrating how energy can be used economically. The greenhouse is essentially just a greenhouse. How many greenhouses do we have all over Uzbekistan that are experiencing difficulties due to the lack of gas for heating ?! Lots of. With this project, we showed how little energy is needed to get a result, how it is possible, even with a small amount of energy, to retain the heat that can be obtained from such energy. In the next project, we will show that all greenhouses can get this energy by heating with biogas. Such a project is submitted to us by the Institute of Vegetable Growing and Melons.

So we are confident that farmers in Uzbekistan will benefit greatly from this project (the first step) and our subsequent initiatives. And also all residents will benefit from this, because the easier it is to provide greenhouses with energy, the more food will be on our tables.