Phylloxera of French vines

The phylloxera, or vine phylloxera, is a species of homopteran insect, a sort of aphid pest of the vine. The term also designates, by metonymy, the vine disease caused by this insect.
Phylloxera [Dactylosphaera vitifoliae (Fitch), family Phylloxeridae] was determined in 1868 by Jules Emile Planchon, who had then given it the name of Phylloxera vastatrix, which is sometimes still used today.

The insect is native to the eastern United States and provoked a serious crisis of European vineyards from 1863. Indeed, it took more than thirty years to overcome, using rootstocks derived from American plants naturally resistant to phylloxera. In 1869, Victor Company created Pulliat Regional wine of Lyon, and held conferences and grafting courses on rootstocks resistant to regenerate the French vines attacked by phylloxera.
Since the reconstitution of vineyards, this pest is of secondary importance in most vineyards in the world, subsisting on mostly grafted plants, or those planted in the sand. Among the ungrafted vineyards, those of Chile are always spared, but on December 1, 2006, the insect was detected in the Yarra Valley in the Australian state of Victoria and in New Zealand.  Other discoveries followed in December 2008 in Australia.
There is also pear phylloxera (Aphanostigma piri) that is endemic to Portugal, which appeared in France for the first time in 1945

Description
Phylloxera is a tiny biting insect, subservient to the vine, related to aphids, with a remarkable polymorphism:
parthenogenetic forms, females reproduce by parthenogenesis – without the intervention of males;

ranging in color from yellow to brown, ranging in size from 0.3 to 1.4 mm;

distinguished by gall forms that live on the leaves, and lesion forms, living on roots;
the sexual forms, which do not feed, are devoid of mouthparts:
winged females, golden yellow to tan, with transparent wings, measuring from 2 to 3 mm;
wingless males, length 0.3 to 0.5 mm.
The life cycle of phylloxera
Insects, males and females mate in late summer. The female lays eggs on the stem, a single egg is called winter. The eggs, first yellow, then green during the winter, hatch in spring and give birth to wingless phylloxera (or without wings), which is always a female. In most cases, wingless phylloxera down is on the roots of the vine, the expense on which it lives, hence the name of phylloxera beetle depredation, but it can sometimes go on the leaves, giving rise to galls (this is called phylloxera gall).

The phylloxera beetle depredation is yellow. It has a sucker that sticks in the root to absorb the sap. The insect undergoes three molts in about three weeks before becoming an adult, when it begins to lay between forty and one hundred eggs, all of which produce females. This twenty-day cycle is repeated several times, giving a total of five or six generations.
In summer, all females molt and some turn into pupae, which become themselves phylloxera adults. These winged phylloxeras spawn again (on the buds and leaves of vines), the eggs giving this time producing males and females. The latter live only a few days, just long enough to mate and produce winter eggs, mentioned above.

Damage to the vine
Infestation of a vine by phylloxera causes death in three years. These are from the lesion generations – who live on the roots – which are dangerous. Their bites on young roots cause the formation of tubercles, which subsequently become infected and precipitate the death of the root. The gall generations – who live on the leaves on which their bites cause galls – cause yellowing of foliage, which is not fatal to the plant.

Chronology of the invasion of phylloxera in Europe and Worldwide
Phylloxera was first established in France. The first infestations that appear here and there, due to the carelessness of nurseries or experimenters, then spreads like an oil stain more or less quickly depending on the density of vineyards and the influence of prevailing winds. Despite the measures imposed by governments to control imports of vines, phylloxera has gradually infested vineyards around the world, sparing only the vineyards planted in sandy soil, and resistant American plantings.

Control used
Wine growers and scientists were first found completely disarmed before the disasters caused by the insect. Experience quickly proved that vines planted in sandy soil were resistant to phylloxera (sand, its structure and its mobility, preventing crush lesion forms down to the roots), but it was difficult to consider transplanting entire vineyards into sandy soil. So growers tried, often empirically, various treatments with more or less satisfactory results.
To destroy the egg of winter, stems were stained with a mixture of water, lime, naphthalene and gross heavy oil from coal. Still practiced in the early twentieth century, this technique has not proved very effective.
Using special equipment, a treatment with sulfide carbon was introduced into the soil; a certain amount of carbon disulfide, a volatile liquid with fumes will kill the insect. The product was injected into the soil with a plow or a sulfurous PAL injector (Vermorel pal). The method was quite effective, but took too long and was too expensive, as was treatment with sulphocarbonate potassium, which involved digging a basin around the vine and pouring a liquid solution.
Another treatment is flooding; the vineyard is drowned under a layer of water that will suffocate the insect.  An excellent method, but it can not apply to irrigated land and is therefore the least conducive to quality vineyards.
Planting American vines, which they found out they were immunized against phylloxera, is another treatment.  This method was not very feasible because it would mean the loss of varieties of French quality.  The method did contain a good solution: using plants of American rootstocks, a technique still used today to protect them from phylloxera.