Ungrafted vines: in search of the Holy Grail

The culprit is only half a millimetre in size - but it was big enough to destroy hundreds of thousands of hectares of vines across the European continent during the second half of the 19th century. The rampage of Daktulosphaira vitifoliae, a species of the dwarf aphid family (Phylloxeridae) was so drastic that viticulture has had a different face ever since. And somehow it has lost its roots; due to the seemingly obvious fact that a vine standing with its own root system in the soil has been gone since the phylloxera attack on the roots of European vines.