Bordeaux mixture
English
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Etymology
[edit]Calque of French bouillie bordelaise, after Bordeaux in France, where it is used on vines.
Noun
[edit]Bordeaux mixture (countable and uncountable, plural Bordeaux mixtures)
- A mixture of copper sulfate and lime that is sprayed on plants as a fungicide.
- Hypernyms: mixture, material, fungicide
- Coordinate term: Burgundy mixture
- 1891 November 16, The Times, pg 12 col A:
- Reports are coming to hand from a very large number of districts as to the success which has attended the use of the Bordeaux mixture (sulphate of copper and lime) as a preventive of potato disease.
- 1910, Frank Lincoln Stevens, John Galentine Hall, “Historical”, in Diseases of Economic Plants[1], Macmillan, pages 7-9:
- The aggressiveness of several plant diseases in Europe between 1878 and 1882, particularly the downy mildew upon the grape, which, about 1878, had invaded Europe from America, stimulated a search in the former country for effective spraying mixtures. Trials of many chemicals were made, but it was left to accident to suggest and to the genius of Millardet, of Bordeaux, France, to perfect the happy combination of lime and bluestone that we now know as the Bordeaux mixture. It was customary in certain vineyards to sprinkle a few rows of grapevines near the road with a mixture of milk of lime and bluestone to give them a poisonous appearance to ward off depredation of the hungry passer-by. The vines so treated in 1882 were noted by Prillieux and Millardet to be less injured by the mildew than were other vines, and they ascribed the beneficial effect to its proper cause, the lime-bluestone mixture.
While several investigators were engaged simultaneously in experimenting with these chemicals upon the mildew, it was Millardet who first planned and executed experiments and published results which demonstrated the commercial value of the lime-bluestone treatment.
The first systematic applications of copper, and of copper with lime as a disease preventive, were made under the direction of Millardet, August 18, 1883. In 1884 the work was repeated, and in 1885 Millardet published the first directions for preparing
BORDEAUX MIXTURE
Water...........130 liters (34 gallons)
Bluestone........8 kilograms (17.6 pounds)
Lime..............15 kilograms (33 pounds)
This mixture was to be shaken upon the plants with a broom.
Following this demonstration came the introduction of an era, not yet at an end, of active experimentation with fungicides, wet and dry, which has already yielded results of incalculable value.
- 1915 December 4, “Burgundy mixture as a substitute for Bordeaux mixture”, in The Agricultural News: A Fortnightly Review of the Imperial Department of Agriculture for the West Indies[2], volume 14, number 355, Barbados, page 398:
- Considerable difficulty is experienced in several of the West Indian islands in obtaining quicklime for the preparation of Bordeaux mixture, and in keeping it in good condition when it has been procured. This has resulted in the use of slaked, or partially slaked, lime for the purpose, with the result that an inferior mixture has been produced. Instead of resorting in this difficulty to expensive and unsatisfactory commercial preparations, it may be suggested that the use of Burgundy mixture, in which the lime is replaced by sodium carbonate (washing soda) offers an alternative that is likely to give excellent results.
According to experience covering a period of five years in the use of Burgundy as compared with Bordeaux mixture against potato blight, the Department of Agriculture for Ireland reports that the former gave better results in the yield of the sprayed plots, and possesses moreover, the following advantages even where good lime is available:—
1. The spraying mixture adheres longer to the foliage of the plants, and is not so readily washed off by rain.
2. The mixture is more easily prepared.
3. The nozzles of the machine are not so likely to become stopped up with grit or refuse material. If the mixture is carefully made there should be no sediment.
Dr. A. S. Horne has recently published in the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society a formula for a Burgundy mixture which is rendered more adhesive by the addition of milk, and records very successful results from its use against leaf-curl disease of peaches. The proportions are as follows:— […]
Translations
[edit]copper sulphate and lime mixture
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