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New World Diseases: Syphilis and…Powdery Mildew
In 1492, it took more than 2 months to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Later and longer, the Manila Galleons, which started their route in 1565, spent over 4 months navigating the width of the Pacific Ocean. These oceans served as vast buffers between the connected continents of the Old World and the isthmus-islands of the New World. The mutual isolation of the two worlds famously resulted in the evolution and development of unique species of flora and fauna in either plane. The New World ate potatoes and hunted buffalo. The Old World farmed wheat and rode horses. Columbus’s series of voyages sliced the 10 millenia separation into ribbons and the so-called Columbian Exchange was born.
Living organisms began artificially migrating between the two land masses with mixed results. There were exchanges that may be considered good, but those that were bad were devastating. Diseases caused by unique bacteria and viruses spread between the two worlds. Human populations were unprepared. Smallpox from Europe nearly erased native populations. Syphilis, according to some, came from the New World and led to huge outbreaks in Europe during the 1500s.
These human diseases are the most consequential of the plights that were swapped during the Columbian Exchange, but they were not the only ones. As it turns out, the New World was filled to the brim with wild grapes which had coevolved alongside maladies of the vine. In this exchange, the Old World got the short end of the stick as its centuries-old vineyards inexplicably withered away to near extinction. So what were the vine diseases that came from the New World? Why were they so devastating to European grapes and thus the wine industry?
The grape diseases of the New World did not immediately reach Europe. Contrary to this, European vines were one of the first imports into the Americas as the Spanish, French, and the British in particular tried to establish a new wine industry on the other side of the Atlantic. These vines rarely survived life in America, particularly east of the Rocky Mountains. It was this swath of land that ended on the Atlantic coast that was home to some of the grape vine’s worst enemies. European vines, Vitis vinifera, were ill equipped to survive in North America, and would suffer massively when North America came to them.
Powdery mildew, uncinula necator, or oidium reached Europe in 1840. The disease came from a fungus native to the eastern region of North America and must have traveled on vines or cuttings of North American vines that were imported into Europe. The fungus thrives on green cells in grape leaves and the grapes themselves. It will spread to healthy live cells adjacent to the infected area as well. The infected cells soon die and may appear white as the fungus spores. The disease cripples vines and can result in fruit dropping off the plant entirely. It can even survive winters inside of the protection of frozen buds.
Madeira, which had been the preferred wine of British colonists and early Americans, was the first victim of powdery mildew. The island was cursed by its proximity to the States and by its extensive trade with the country. Once the mold arrived, it decimated the crop. The vineyards would take at least 50 years to recover and likely still have not achieved their previous level of cultivation. The European vineyards were also devastated, but farmers learned fairly quickly that dusting with sulphur was an effective deterrent to the fungus. Powdery mildew is still any vintner’s nightmare today and they fight it with fungicides and trimming. There is even a robot named Will-e operating in Oregon which autonomously roams the vineyards of Willamette Valley Vineyards and kills the fungus with UV rays.
The second, and perhaps most infamous, New World plague to wither the vineyards of Europe was Phylloxera vasatrix. Typically referred to just as phylloxera, this pest is a microscopic aphid or louse which goes through several metamorphoses during its life cycle. The most consequential of these for vintners is the stage during which the insect lives beneath the ground and feasts on the root system of vines. The little bug was native to the Mississippi valley but made its way to Europe during the latter half of the 19th century.
The devastating aphid arrived in France around 1863 and had destroyed 40% of the country’s vines by 1890, when hybrid vines were introduced. The rest of Europe fell to the disease by the 1890s. At first farmers were baffled as their plants died before their eyes, but when the dead plants were uprooted, the scarring and distortion left by the bug was obvious.
The economic devastation that followed these infestations was near total in agricultural areas that had depended on wine for centuries. Wine prices became extremely volatile during the 19th century as different regions rushed to compensate for production of other regions that were crippled by phylloxera. Some research suggests that these economic ‘phylloxera shocks’ were harsh enough to stunt the growth of children born in particularly bad years.
The cure for the disease was yet another New World import, the roots of American vines. These roots had coevolved with the root-loving pest and had developed partial resistance. When European vines, which had been cultivated for taste over centuries, were grafted onto American roots, a new hybrid was born that could survive the aphid and produce palatable wines. Europe’s vineyards had to be uprooted and replanted with the hybrid vines. These New World-Old World bastards would become the future of global viticulture.
Downy mildew, plasmopara viticola, came from the most humid areas of the Eastern states. It destroyed leaves and starved the plant of nutrition. It was also known to infect the grapes and cause brown rot. This was the last of the major vine diseases to spread from the New World to the old vineyards of Europe.
The disease arrived in 1878, ironically, on vines that were being used to rescue European vines from the previous scourges of American wild grapes. It was quickly identified across Europe. By 1882, Europeans had accidentally realized that copper fungicides protected against the disease (luckily they dusted grapes with copper to deter thieves). The disease was worse following humid weather. Today, it is considered one of the deadliest vine diseases in the world.
The Columbian biological exchange cost indigenous American peoples millions of lives. Microbes from the Old World, to which New World blood had never been exposed, quickly killed large swathes of people and decimated cultural memory. Years later, grapes would witness a similarly damaging exchange between the two worlds, except reversed. North America was a natural vineyard to a variety of species of wild grapes. Alongside those grapes, pests and diseases evolved. Vitis vinifera, the European vine, had never been exposed to these pests and so contact proved to be deadly and often virulent.
American vines were resistant to a certain degree to the scourges of their own land. For example, muscadine grapes, native to the most humid areas in the States, have partial resistance to the humidity-loving downy mildew. These varieties were then useful for hybridizing European grapes against that fungus. Similar techniques have been used for nearly all American diseases. Today, nearly every vine the vintner grows is the result of this biological exchange, and nearly every bottle of wine mingles the genealogies of vines from either side of the pond.
Sources Cited
Badia-Miró, Marc, et al. “The Grape Phylloxera Plague as a Natural Experiment: The Upkeep of Vineyards in Catalonia (Spain), 1858–1935.” Australian Economic History Review, vol. 50, no. 1, Mar. 2010, pp. 39–61. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/j.1467-8446.2009.00271.x.
Banerjee, Abhijit, et al. “Long-Run Health Impacts of Income Shocks: Wine and Phylloxera in Nineteenth-Century France.” Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 92, no. 4, Nov. 2010, pp. 714–728. EBSCOhost, doi:www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/rest.
GESSLER, Cesare, et al. “<em>Plasmopara Viticola</Em>: A Review of Knowledge on Downy Mildew of Grapevine and Effective Disease Management.” Phytopathologia Mediterranea, vol. 50, no. 1, [Firenze University Press, Mediterranean Phytopathological Union], 2011, pp. 3–44, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26458675.
McCarthy, Ed. “Vintage Madeira.” Wine Review Online – Vintage Madeira, https://www.winereviewonline.com/Ed_McCarthy_on_Vintage Madeira.cfm.
“Measuring Phylloxera’s Impact on the World of Wine.” SevenFifty Daily, 13 Aug. 2021, https://daily.sevenfifty.com/measuring-phylloxeras-impact-on-the-world-of-wine/#:~:text=One particular pest, an aphid that came to,world’s vineyards once freed from its native land.
“Uncinula Necator.” Uncinula Necator – an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics, https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/uncinula-necator.
“Vineyard Tech & The Green Cyber Revolution.” Wine Industry Advisor, 29 Sept. 2021, https://wineindustryadvisor.com/2021/09/30/sustainable-vineyard-technology.
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