Millardet, PMA
NAME:
Millardet, Pierre-Marie-Alexis
ACHIEVEMENTS:
First successful fungicide
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
13 December 1838, Monmerey-la-Ville, France
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:
15 December 1902, Bordeaux, France. Aged 64
DISCIPLINE:
Botanist
FIELD:
Botany
LANGUAGE:
French
PARENTS
?
SIBLINGS:
?
SPOUSE:
?
CHILDREN:
?
EDUCATION:
University of Heidelberg
University of Freidburg
MAJOR WORK:
“On the reestablishment of vineyards by American vines”: 1884
Treatment of mildew and rot by a mixture of lime and copper sulfate”: 1886
LIFE AND TIMES:
After studying medicine in Germany, Millardet returned to France where he obtained doctorates in medicine and natural science. He was made an assistant professor of botany at Strasbourg in 1869 and moved to Nancy in 1872. In 1876 he was appointed professor of botany at Bordeaux University in the center of one of France's most important wine regions.
In 1863, in a greenhouse in Hammersmith, London, the burrowing vine louse had been observed for the first time in Europe. Soon after, it was seen in the south of France where small yellow insects were seen on the roots of dying vines.
In 1868 the condition was identified as phylloxera and the pest named "vastatrix" (the devastator). Over the following fifteen years it spread to every vineyard in France. Phylloxera had been introduced to Europe on American vines imported for grafting. Many chemical treatments were tried and some vineyards were even flooded in an attempt to destroy the pest. The French government offered a prize for solutions, and suggestions ranged from burying a live toad under each vine to putting hot sealing wax on pruning cuts.
It was Millardet who eventually controlled the pest by introducing new, pylloxera-resistant American vines of a species called vitis riparia and vitis rupestris.. It took over twenty years to replant the Bordeaux vineyards.
Farmers were also fighting off a fungal pest called Plasmopara viticola (downy mildew), to which grapes were particularly susceptible. It had long been the practice by winegrowers in the Medoc area (near Bordeaux) to sprinkle vines with a mixture of copper sulphate, lime and water which coated and discoloured the grapes and helped to deter thieves.
At harvest time in 1882, Millardet noticed that the mixture also had the effect of stopping downy mildew. During the nineteenth century, scientists like <work related to> de Bary* had investigated fungal diseases and there was a body of research about how pests reproduced and spread. Millardet carried out experiments on the use of the winegrowers' mixture on as a funcide and in 1885 he published his results. The liquid became known as the Bordeaux mixture and was the first successful fungicide to be used world-wide.
Copper sulphate combined with <work related to> hydrazine* is still used as an agricultural fungal deterrent.
ASSESSMENT: Millardet saved the French wine industry.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: PMA Millardet, inventor of first fungicide
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Encyclopedia Britannica
Peppercorn, David. Bordeaux. Faber & Faber, London, 1982
Hanson, Anthony. Burgundy. Faber & Faber, London, 1995