phylloxera
NAME: Phylloxera
ALTERATIVE NAME: Phylloxera vitifoliae
LANGUAGE: French
TIME: 1870s-1920s
LOCATION: France
CATEGORY: Vine blight
DISCIPLINE: Wine trade
SHORT DESCRIPTION: A small greenish-yellow insect (Homoptera), highly destructive to grape plants in Europe and the Western United States, which caused a devastating wine blight in France from 1870 onwards. The blight was eventually controlled by grafting European plants to resistant rootstalks of vines native to the Eastern United States immune to phylloxera.
DESCRIPTION: During the 1860s (soon after Pasteur* had apparently saved French wine from spoiling by the introduction of the pasteurization
process (1862), and during the Golden Age of French wine-growing when France added 500,000 acres to her vineyards) came the first of three plagues which threatened to destroy the wine-producing regions of France.
The first plague, of powdery mildew, occurred during the 1860s. Control took over a decade and led directly to the introduction of the second plague, of phylloxera, in the 1870s. The third, downy mildew, first occurred in 1878, but within four years a cure developed by Millardet* and known as the "Bordeaux mixture" - a combination of copper-sulphate and lime in liquid form - had been found by Faculty of Science at Bordeaux. (This use of fungicide led to the use of hydrazine*).
Together, these three plagues not only devastated all but a small minority of vineyards, they altered fundamentally and permanently the way cultivated vines are grown around the world.
By far the most damaging of the three blights proved to be the phylloxera, a tiny yellow plant louse (about the size of a pinprick) which 'emigrated' from America to Europe in the 1860s on native root stock brought to Europe in an attempt to replace the vines blighted by powdery mildew with resistant U.S. root stocks.
Many of these roots carried either
phylloxera lice or eggs, which the greater speed of the steam-powered ships allowed to survive during the 9-10 day journey across the Atlantic. As a result, the plague entered France where the vines were thickest, by the mouth of the Rhine, and appeared first in 1865 in several communes near Arles in Provence, and then quickly spread.
The phylloxera louse destroys a vine by sinking its proboscis into the vine roots and sucking out the sap, and then injecting a substance that infects the roots. As a result, the plant ceases to circulate sap through its infected roots, which form root galls which the plant then discards until eventually it is left rootless, and withers and dies.
By 1870 the phylloxera was expanding over Gard, Bouches-du-Rhone, and Vaucluse, the great Rhone estuary, with vines once productive of considerable wealth withering and dying, leaving their owners penniless and burdened with debts. By 1876 the vines of the
Cotes-du-Rhone and most of southern France were either dead or dying.
Action was taken at three levels: by international congresses, such as the Phylloxera Convention in Berne (1881), that proved quite ineffective; by national laws that from 1874 tried unsuccessfully to curb the importation of American vines; and at the
departmental and local level, by agricultural committees. In the mid-1870s the French government also set up an agricultural commission of vineyard owners and experts which urged the destruction of infected vines.
In certain areas two preventative measures had been discovered - extensive flooding of flat-land vineyards in order to drown the insects, and the planting of vines on loose, sandy soil. These measures saved some vineyards and led to the establishment of new ones (especially in Languedoc), but finally, in 1887, a law was passed allowing vines grafted onto American roots to be planted in Côte d'Or.
These vines proved strong and successful, but it was only after 1891 that the number of vineyards treated with chemicals began to decline. By 1900, only 340 hectares were still receiving chemical treatment, whereas 18,900 had been reconstructed on American roots. Between the early 1870s and the late 1890s France had lost about 51% of its vineyards, and had seen a decline of 61% in the amount of wine produced. There was to be no general recovery of the prestige and profitability of wine for over 50 years.
By the end of the phylloxera blight, the total area covered by vineyards in France had been reduced by almost one-third, and 30 percent of what was destroyed has never been replaced.
The phylloxera insect has defied all efforts to destroy it and survives to this day, creating problems particularly in California, Australia and New Zealand. The primary reason is complacence, as in areas where no phylloxera has been seen for many years there has been widespread planting of ungrafted European vines.
Today its progress can be monitored by aerial infra-red photography; once an infestation is clearly visible the vineyard's days are numbered, its length of survival depending largely on the nature of the soil.
ONELINER: phylloxera, blight that nearly ruined French wine industry
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
EB
Ordish, George, The Great Wine Blight, London: J.M. Dent & Co., 1972
Wikipedia:
Grape phylloxera (Daktulosphaira vitifoliae (Fitch 1855); family Phylloxeridae); originally described in France as Phylloxera vastatrix; equated to the previously described Daktulosphaira vitifoliae, Phylloxera vitifoliae; commonly just called phylloxera(/fɪˈlɒksərə/; from Greek φύλλον, leaf, and ξερόν, dry) is a pest of commercial grapevines worldwide, originally native to easternNorth America.
These almost microscopic, pale yellow sap-sucking insects, related to aphids, feed on the roots and leaves of grapevines (depending on the phylloxera genetic strain). On Vitis vinifera L., the resulting deformations on roots ("nodosities" and "tuberosities") and secondary fungal infections can girdle roots, gradually cutting off the flow of nutrients and water to the vine.[1]Nymphs also form protective galls on the undersides of grapevine leaves of some Vitis species and overwinter under the bark or on the vine roots; these leaf galls are typically only found on the leaves of American vines.
American vine species (such as Vitis labrusca) have evolved to have several natural defenses against phylloxera. The roots of the American vines exude a sticky sap that repels the nymph form when it tries to feed from the vine by clogging its mouth. If the nymph is successful in creating a feeding wound on the root, American vines respond by forming a protective layer of tissue to cover the wound and protect it from secondary bacterial or fungal infections.[1]
Currently there is no cure for phylloxera and unlike other grape diseases such as powdery or downy mildew, there is no chemical control or response. The only successful means of controlling phylloxera has been the grafting of phylloxera resistant American rootstock (usually hybrid varieties created from the Vitis berlandieri, Vitis riparia and Vitis rupestris species) to more susceptible European vinifera vines.[1]
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In the late 19th century the phylloxera epidemic destroyed most of the vineyards for wine grapes in Europe, most notably in France. Phylloxera was introduced to Europe when avid botanists in Victorian England collected specimens of American vines in the 1850s. Because phylloxera is native to North America, the native grape species there are at least partially resistant. By contrast, the European wine grape Vitis vinifera is very susceptible to the insect. The epidemic devastated vineyards in Britain and then moved to the European mainland, destroying most of the European grape growing industry. In 1863, the first vines began to deteriorate inexplicably in the southern Rhône region of France. The problem spread rapidly across the continent. In France alone, total wine production fell from 84.5 million hectolitres in 1875 to only 23.4 million hectolitres in 1889.[3] Some estimates hold that between two-thirds and nine-tenths of all European vineyards were destroyed.
In France, one of the desperate measures of grape growers was to bury a live toad under each vine to draw out the "poison".[3] Areas with soils composed principally of sand or schist were spared, and the spread was slowed in dry climates, but gradually the aphid spread across the continent. A significant amount of research was devoted to finding a solution to the phylloxera problem, and two major solutions gradually emerged: grafting cuttings onto resistant rootstocks and hybridization.
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The only European grapes that are natively resistant to phylloxera are the Assyrtiko grape which grows on the volcanic island of Santorini, Greece, although it is not clear whether the resistance is due to the rootstock itself or the volcanic ash on which it grows and the Juan Garcia grape variety, authocthonous to the medieval village of Fermoselle in Spain. The Juan Garcia variety remained--untouched by phylloxera--sheltered on the vineyards planted on the man-made land terraces along the mountainous skirts on the gigantic and steep Arribes River Canyon, in the Arribes in Spain, where the microclimatic conditions don't allow the phylloxera to grow.
To escape the threat of phylloxera, wines have been produced since 1979 on the sandy beaches of Provence’s Bouches-du-Rhône, which extends from the Gard Coast to the waterfront village of Saintes Maries de la Mer. The sand, sun and wind in this area has been a major deterrent to phylloxera. The wine produced here is called "Vins des Sables" or "wines of the sands".[4]
In the same department, where the canal irrigation system built by the Romans still partly persists to this day, winter flooding is also practiced where possible, for instance south of the city of Tarascon. Flooding the vineyards for 50 days kills all the nymphs that overwinter in the roots or the bark at the bottom of the plant.[5]
Vines that survived phylloxera[edit]
A collection of vines with grafted rootstocks.
According to wine critic and authorKerin O'Keefe, thanks to tiny parcels of vineyards throughout Europe which were inexplicably unscathed, it is still possible to get a taste of wines as they were before the phylloxera devastation.[6]
For no obvious reason, three tiny parcels of ungrafted Pinot noir escaped phylloxera, making it possible to produce one of the rarest and most expensive Champagnes available: Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises.[6]
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