Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

With the ultimate goal of producing resistant varieties to include in the RNS catalog, thorough tissue analyses were made of extensive breeding materials to determine the sensitivity of different varieties in function of the number of cell layers penetrated by the fungus. The various stages of the defense necrosis were distinguished, the last two being characterized by cell collapse and by heavy infiltration of the fungus.[101] Above, I insisted on the importance of the streamlining of the inoculation procedure in order to have a fast and reliable method of establishing the degree of resistance of hundreds of thousands of seedlings. With the growing number of different fungus strains identified (eight of them by 1936), the case for parallel investigations on the biology and cultivation of the fungus was even stronger. Isolation of P. infestans biotypes and safe separation through cultures on artificial substrates were required so that conclusions about the relation between host tissue and fungus growth could be drawn from the results of controlled experiments. Breeding resistant potatoes demanded not only the transformation of the tuber into a suitable laboratory object but also the careful standardization of its parasites—in this case, the P. infestans fungus.

In 1935, in the same paper in which he conceded that W-varieties constituted not a definite answer to late blight, Müller was already suggesting that resistant plants could act as “inductors” of new biotypes of P. Infestans, with the virulence of the latter influenced by passages through host plants of different grades of resistance.[102] In fact, as Müller would later demonstrate, the necrosis depended less on the absolute reaction rate and more on the relation between the hyphal growth rate and the rapidity of the reaction.[103] Because not only P. infestans but also other microorganisms are unable to exist in the necrotic host tissue, Müller postulated that this localized cell death must be accompanied by the production or activation of a substance he called phytoalexin (‘alexein’ meaning “defense” in Greek). In subsequent years, biochemists would explore this fungicide in depth in order to replace Müller’s functional definition with a structural one.[104] According to Turner, until the 1970s the Phytophthora infestans associated with Solanum tuberosum was the major model organism of plant pathology for studying the general response mechanism of plants against pathogens.

Viruses

The different combinations of potato varieties, pathogen strains, and inoculation methods constituted generative experimental systems that led to new epistemic objects and the possibility of incorporating new techniques—to use Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s phraseology.[105] Not only did potatoes have an obvious economic and social relevance in the German context; they also were research objects able to sustain the growing of a vast community of scientists and instruments at the Biologische Reichsanstalt für Land- und Forstwirtschaft. Each research team at the BRA developed a particular experimental system. The team working on plant breeding and genetics (Dienstelle für Pflanzenzüchtung und Vererbungslehre), headed by Karl Otto Müller, concentrated on the W-varieties and Phytophthora; the team working on agriculture botany (Landwitschaftliche Botanik) concentrated on wart disease.[106] The interest in Solanum demissum that Müller had developed in the course of his work on Phytophthora resistance led to the use of that wild species in the Colorado Beetle work, and the methods used in wart research led to the classification standards developed in the varietal registry section. In other words, the different experimental systems that structured the organizational chart of the BRA were built on resources previously developed by other sections of the BRA.

^{Figure 3.9 A 1936 organizational chart of the Biologische Reichsanstalt für Land- und Forstwirtschaft.}

^{(Die Biologische Reichsanstalt für Land und Forstwirtschaft in Berlin-Dahlem, Paul Parey, 1936)}