Daniil Aleksandrovich Kostylev is a scientist agronomist, candidate of agricultural sciences, associate professor, owner of the nursery "Tsvetnik Urala".
Expert of the online publication "BelNovosti" on gardening and vegetable gardening issues.
Daniil Kostylev began his scientific career in the field of agronomy when he was a student at the Bashkir State Agrarian University. His diploma thesis was on the topic of “Cultivation of medicinal calendula (Calendula officinalis L.) in the conditions of the Northern forest-steppe zone of the Republic of Bashkortostan”. In 1997, he graduated from the Bashkir State Agrarian University (BSAU) with honors.
In 1997, he entered the full-time postgraduate program at BSAU, and three years later defended his dissertation, receiving the academic degree of candidate of agricultural sciences. From 2001 to 2019, he worked as a teacher at BSAU - first as an assistant, then as an associate professor. He taught such disciplines as vegetable growing, floriculture, ornamental gardening, etc., and is a co-author of three textbooks. In 2008, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation awarded Daniil Kostylev the academic title of associate professor.
Daniil Kostylev has developed technologies for growing ornamental plants such as calendula and echinacea, and conducts research on the winter hardiness of woody plants. In total, he has published more than 50 scientific articles in journals and conference proceedings.
From 2019 to the present, he is not on the staff of BSAU, but is involved in lecturing on individual courses, as well as an expert in assessing and approving BSAU educational programs in the field of "Landscape Architecture".
Along with his scientific and teaching activities, Daniil Kostylev actively implemented his scientific developments and knowledge into practice. In 2000, he organized the first private landscaping company in the Republic of Bashkortostan (OOO Firma MAK), created a greenhouse complex on its basis, and in 2014 opened the largest private plant nursery in the Republic of Bashkortostan (nursery Tsvetnik Urala).
In the nursery, he continues scientific research on the development of technology for propagation and cultivation of plants, as well as on variety testing of new varieties. Daniil Kostylev developed a comprehensive technology for green plant cuttings, which he reported at a seminar of the Association of Planting Material Producers in 2020. This technology has been successfully used by many nurseries in Russia and other countries. According to nursery growers, the technology has increased the rooting rate of green plant cuttings in their nurseries by 15-20%, which has significantly increased the economic efficiency of production.
Since 2011, Daniil Kostylev has been actively involved in organizational and scientific work in the Association of Planting Material Producers (APPM, which unites nurseries from Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan). He was elected to the APPM Board four times, is a permanent member of the Editorial Board of the APPM Conference, and was awarded APPM Gratitude for his active participation and work on projects.
The conducted scientific research allowed Daniil Kostylev to create a unique method for determining the winter hardiness of ornamental plants and to develop an original winter hardiness scale. Based on the results of these studies, APPM created the "APPM Winter Hardiness Map", Daniil Kostylev is the author and manager of this project. Factual material for the Map was collected over a period of nine years. Now the project has been successfully implemented: the interactive Plant Winter Hardiness Map on the APPM website is functioning and helps specialists in the field of landscaping and gardening to select plants that correspond to the climate of their region.
Currently, Daniil Kostylev is breeding new winter-hardy varieties of walnut and mulberry in his nursery, which do not freeze even in the conditions of the Southern Urals. Several years of expeditions in the Ural Mountains allowed him to collect a collection of local decorative forms of Cossack juniper, which easily withstand temperature changes from -40 °C in winter to +40 °C in summer.
Daniil Kostylev actively popularizes scientific achievements in the field of agronomy: he wrote and published two monographs on plant cultivation for agricultural specialists, three popular science books in the field of gardening and vegetable gardening for amateur gardeners.
In 2020, Daniil Kostylev won the National Television Award "Leaders of the Region-2020" in the nomination "Discovery of the Year" (BST, Ufa), which is awarded for business success and charity. In 2022, he was elected to the Board of the Association of Landscape Industry Professionals of Bashkortostan.