Bordeaux mixture, development

The second invasion came in 1865 when attempts to control the root aphid Phylloxera through the importation and use of Phylloxera-resistant root stocks inadvertently introduced vine downy mildew, Plasmopara viticola, into the French vineyards. This stimulated what is regarded as the major breakthrough in fungicide use when Millardet, in 1885, acting upon a chance observation, developed the use of Bordeaux mixture, a cocktail of copper sulfate and lime, which is still used extensively in vines and many other crops. 

Fungi were recognized as the cause of several serious plant diseases in the middle of the 19th century. The need to control fungal diseases of plants, such as Plasmopara viticola infections of vines, led to the development by Millardet in 1883 of Bordeaux mixture (copper sulfate and lime). 

Other than Bordeaux mixture, none of these compounds is generally available to the domestic gardener. Much attention has been focused on the development of blight-resistant strains of potato, some generated by selective breeding, but also a range in which a gene from a resistant wild potato relative. Solatium bulbocastanum, has been incorporated. 

Chemical thermodynamics was developed by Pierre Maurice Martin Duhem (Paris, lo June i86i-Cabrespine, 14 September 1916), professor of theoretical physics in Bordeaux, who published on the equations for heats of solution and dilution which had been deduced by Kirchhoff, on the liquefaction of gaseous mixtures, eutectic and transition points for binary mixtures which can form mixed crystals, and a long series of papers on false equilibrium of doubtful value. He published some books on thermodynamics and later on the history of science. An important general thermodynamic equation (Gibbs-Duhem equation) was deduced independently by Gibbs and Duhem. ... 

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