1) PIER ANTONIO MICHELLI (Italian):

• He was an Italian botanist.
• He was the founder and father of Mycology.
• He was the first person who observed fungal spores for the first time and conducted many spore germination studies (by growing fungus organisms on freshly cut pieces of melons and pears).
• He was the first person who observed Cystidia on the lamellar edge or hymenial layer of Agaricales.
• In 1729 he published a book “Nova Plantarum Genera” in which he gave descriptions about 1900 species in Latin out of which 900 were fungi. The important genera are Aspergillus niger, Botrytis sps., Polyporus sps. Etc.

2) TILLET (French)

• In 1755, he published a paper on bunt or stinking smut of wheat
• By well planned experiments he proved that wheat seeds that contained black powder on their surface produced more diseased plants than clean seeds.
• He emphasized that bunt was an infectious disease and it was closely related with fungus. However, he believed that the disease was caused by some toxin produced by the black powder. He did not know that the black powder contained the spore mass of the fungus.
• He reported that the chemical treatment of seeds with common salt and lime inhibited the contagious activity.