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One of the absurdities of organic foodism is that growers

spray their crops with pesticides such as copper sulphate
(CuSO
4
)a thoroughly poisonous (and inorganic)
substanceyet reject modern, safer, thoroughly researched
alternatives. Organic farmers are so attached to copper
sulphate that they won the right to continue using it despite a
European Union ban originally scheduled to come into effect
2 years ago.
CuSO
4
was long since removed, on safety grounds,
from childrens chemistry sets. It is persistent in the soil,
and is a hepatotoxin that has caused documented cases of
liver damage in vineyard workers.
Nevertheless, organic farmers
deploy it on their fields in the
interests of naturalness. Strange.
Its the inconsistency that
concerns me here, not the
agricultural use of copper sulphate
per se. In the real world, this
substance has been a tremendous
boon, particularly when mixed
with lime (calcium hydroxide)
as Bordeaux mixture to control
late potato blight caused by
Phytophthora infestans (the agent
of the Irish potato famine).
Present-day replacements, derided
by the organic movement, are
both more effective than CuSO
4
and less toxic to non-target
species. But in its day agricultural
copper was a lifesaver.
The man who made it so was
Pierre Marie Alexis Millardet
who, as Peter Ayres says in an
appreciation (Mycologist 2004; 18: 23), could have been as
famous as Petri or Bunsen had he been more pushy and
appended his name to his innovation. Among Bordeaux
mixtures many attractive features, it has not triggered the
emergence of resistance among plant-pathogenic fungi and it
has remained relatively cheap.
Millardet was born in 1838 in a small town in the Jura,
France, not far from Louis Pasteurs birthplace. He studied
medicine in Paris, where he developed an interest in
medicinal plants and became a member of the Societe
Botanique de France while still a student. Thence to
Germany, where he studied initially under Wilhelm
Hofmeister, the first person to discern the alternating
generations of mosses, ferns, and other plants, and then under
the distinguished mycologist Anton de Bary.
After serving in the Franco-Prussian war, Millardet took
up a professorship in Nancy and was soon asked to visit the
wine-producing region of Bordeaux whose vines were being
threatened by phylloxera infestation. It was here, during the
1870s and 1880s, that Millardet had the insight to recognise,
and prove scientifically, that a mixture of copper sulphate and
lime might be exploited as a fungicide against mildew and
other conditions.
Others had made claims for both substances (and some
vineyard owners had painted maturing vines with copper
sulphate to deter thieves). But as Ayres points out, it was
Millardet who took the great
step forward, who by experiment
perfected a fungicide which could
be applied to foliage without
damaging either a plant or its
fruits.
Helped by Ulysse Gayon,
professor of chemistry at
Bordeaux, the mycologist
worked out pragmatically the
most effective concentrations
and proportions of the two
constituents of what became
known as Bordeaux mixture.
Numerous field trials were
required to establish the optimal
formula. We now know that
mixing CuSO
4
with lime
generates the active ingredient
cupric hydroxide, which is
stabilised by calcium sulphate.
Given Millardet's first-hand
experiences of the Franco-
Prussian war . . . and the ill-will
towards Germany still felt by many Frenchmen at the time, it
is to Millardet's great credit that it was in a German journal
in which in 1883 he first gave notice of his discovery,
writes Ayres. His open-mindedness was rewarded, however,
because when others claimed precedence for their own 1885
publications, he could point to his article in the Zeitschrift fur
Wein-Obst-und Gartenbau published two years earlier.
Bordeaux mixture was adopted rapidly, not only by
vineyard owners throughout France but by potato growers in
North America and elsewhere around the world. It had a
considerable economic impact, safeguarding vulnerable crops,
averting hunger, and thus saving lives. What a pity that today
Millardets statue, covered in verdigris, stands in a run-down
part of his adopted city, and is not even mentioned in the local
guidebook. Perhaps he should have been more pushy.
Pushing Bordeaux mixture
Bernard Dixon
130 Cornwall Road, Ruislip Manor, Middlesex HA4 6AW, UK
594
The last word
Infectious Diseases Vol 4 September 2004 http://infection.thelancet.com