The French botanist Jules Émile Planchon (1823-1888) studied pharmacy and medicine in Montpellier and returned to this university as professor of botany from 1853. In the meantime, he had worked at the Royal Botanical Gardens of Kew in England and as a teacher in Ghent and Nancy. In 1868, together with the vineyard owner Gaston Bazille (1819-1894) and the horticulturist Félix Sahut, he was commissioned to investigate the cause of the mysterious vine death that subsequently occurred throughout Europe. Within only two days, these three experts succeeded in identifying phylloxera as the cause. When they dug up some rootstocks of diseased vines, the roots seemed to be covered with yellow varnish due to the large number of vine lice.
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