Volodymyr L. Symyrenko (1891-1938) – doctor of agricultural sciences, Professor of Horticulture, Head of the Department of fruit farms of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. In 1915 he graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. Since 1929 - professor. He founded the gardening station on the territory of the family estate Mlievsky (now the Institute of Horticulture and forest-steppe of Ukraine) and has long been its director. Organized the Central State breeder fruit plants of Ukraine and the All-Union Institute of fruits and berries (now the Institute of Horticulture UAAS). He headed the Department of Horticulture at the Ministry of Land Affairs of the UPR. He worked in the Ukrainian Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
He combined fruitful scientific activity with active teaching work. Horticulture professor and Chair of fruit farms of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute (later it became Kiev Institute of Agriculture). Later he worked in schools in Odessa, Uman, Poltava. The name V.L.Simirenko was long been prohibited because in his works he emphasized that gardening should be developed primarily on the basis of local varieties, then acclimatization imported, and then later in the breeding of new sorts. It was totally different point of view comparing with the official Soviet doctrine and practice I.Michurin.
In 1938 he was arrested and died.
The scientific value of the V.L.Simirenko’s work and its contribution to horticulture is not inferior to the scientific heritage of his father - an outstanding scientist-pomologist Leo Symyrenko. At the initiative of a scientist at the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of Ukraine, it was created the first in Ukraine pomology Commission, which later evolved into the State Commission for Cultivar crops. Under his leadership, the first time in the world it was prepared, executed and completed the organizational "pomology book of Ukraine", created pomology cell in each of the natural history and economic-economic regions of Ukraine, conducted variety trials of fruit crops by 29 regional strain-testing plots and developed district recommended range. Tested varieties received metrics which were called pomology books. He was directly involved in the creation of horticultural research network. He arranged for it the research plan, that is still used by academic institutions worldwide.
During ten years with his participation and under his leadership there has been created and published more than 50 fundamental scientific papers. He was the founder of the first Ukrainian magazines on Horticulture and gardening.
He authored more than 200 scientific works, including textbooks for universities, scientific monographs on gardening magazine for middle and lower units, numerous stage in magazines. The largest of them, "The fruit nursery" (1929), "Fruit assortment of Ukraine" (1930), "The production of planting material" (manuscript disappeared during his arrest by the NKVD).