In article , "Timothy"
wrote:

[clips]

This is great information. Thanks for clarifying this for me. I have a few
customers who would like to try such a spray but I've never been able to
find concrete evidence on it's effectiveness and use. Have these studies
been published on the net? If so, could you point me to them? Thanks for
your time....


If you don't live near an agricultural college (the library will have all
the relevant recent articles to hand) then you'll have to go through a
regular library's InterLibrary Loan, & usually there's no fee for
photocopies. Ask for Williams & Williams: "Cow's Milk Vs Powdery Mildew"
in HortIdeas Dec 1999; You could e-mail Peter Crisp direct for
tear-sheets of his paper in the "Australian Grapegrower and Winemaker," or
for other fragments of his larger research (the whole study is a PhD
thesis). His e-mail is
Or get paraphrases of the research at several credible websites; here's a
copy of the initial press release from U of Adelaide:
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/pr/media/.../milkwine.html
Bettiol's signal research is in several journals, but the entirety of one
of his papers is also he
http://www.agrar.de/agenda/bettiol.htm
but I first saw it paraphrased in ORGANIC GARDENING. There are several
other things available as PDF files I downloaded to my desktop but didn't
keep a record of where I got them. But one PDF file of Bettiol's research
can be downloaded he
http://147.46.94.112/journal/sej/ful...908_180801.pdf

Cornell has a large powdery mildew research project that goes back many,
many years. All the articles you can find before year 2000 are about
efficacy of sundry fungicides & of a single biofungicide, including
horticultural oil which they like to cite by trademark name to get the
advertisement in for their sponsor. As late as 2000 Cornell promoted
fungicides & the one biofungicide obtainable from their funding sources as
"the only" effective treatments; the biofungicide AQ10 has since been
shown to be one of the poorest of options & Cornell's research in its
favor now looks more than averagely funding-source-driven. Cornell was
also funded to find out if tydeid mites could control powdery mildew; the
mites worked but the method commercially impractical for cost reasons, yet
Cornell did a premature press release favorable to their funding source
anyway (these types of press releases are primarily to please funders &
frequently the findings at the end of a study are not so thrilling as the
promises originally made, but there will be no further press releases
unless they can again please the sponsors). Here's Cornell's original
press release from 1999,
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases.../Mite.bpf.html
all but promising tydeid mites were the cat's meow of powdery fungus
control, soonafter dropped like a hot potato when within a month the
efficacy & ultra cost-effectiveness of milk became known.

Cornell would never admit the outcome of their research is ever influenced
by brand funding, built-in promotions of brand-name products
notwithstanding. And the premature "promotion" of methods that will go
down in flames -- that's just part of the publicity machine & is
completely out of the hands of the scientists per se. But it's harder to
deny the dilemma it put them in when they have a decade's worth of
research proving the exellence of fungicides, such as the chemical
industry LOVED and re-funded such research annually without a blink to
keep the good news coming -- then suddenly all that research is outmoded
by finding out milk works better. From the chemical industry's point of
view, the fungicides are going to be FOREVER supported by outdated Cornell
studies, just like the herbal medicines industry will cite articles fifty
years disproven if that's all they have. And Cornell might still expect
refunding-without-a-blink if they can just hold off being too aggressive
about getting the news out that milk is better.

The "Cornell formula" as Cornell first promoted it implied one should use
Safers Sunspray oil plus baking soda. Getting a trademarked name in there
had nothing to do with the science of it & everything to do with their
funding. That they recommended Sodium bicarbonate mixed with the trademark
product instead of Potassium bicarbonate was a complete error -- the
once-famed Cornell formula was so focused on promoting their sponsor's
oil, they failed even to find out the addition of Potassium b. would be
way better than Sodium b. The corrected formula is still recommendable as
the foremost treatment for blackspot, but for powdery mildew milk is
easiest & nothing exceeds it. Cornell has included that fact in
"overviews" of all the methods available, but still seemed to highlight
trademarked products & bury the essential details re milk further down the
list.

Cornell cannot afford to put organic methods research high on their
agenda until & unless some of their MINOR funders, such as the Organic
Farming Research Foundation, can begin to compete with the chemical
industry dollar for dollar, which will never happen. If you think that's
cynical, you should see what goes on behind the scenes at a research
hospital, where human lives are even more in the balance, & it's the drug
industry's money rather than patients' health needs that call all the
shots. Anyway, in the meantime, web-wise, a conflicted Cornell seems to
rely on Science News and Science Daily News to paraphrase their research.
And Peter Crisp in Australia & Wagner Bettiol in Brazil continue to get
all the glory. (Crisp by the way was funded by vintners eager to obtain
organic alternatives for grape-growing, or it might never have been
researched -- it's always the money that speaks before the science.)

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/