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blight-resistant American Chestnut program

11 years ago

Does anyone know about the American Chestnut Foundation program? It appears they are breeding American chestnuts with Chinese genes (1/16 I think is the goal) to resist blight.

How is this going? Will trees be available to the general public anytime soon?

More importantly, will they truly be blight-resistant?

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Comments (10)

ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
11 years ago
do understand that 'resistance' does not make anything 'proof' ...

the problem i always had with things like long lived trees.. is that you invest 10 or 20 years.. only to then find out.. the day after you think to yourself.. man that tree is just perfect .. and pleasing me no end ... you find out.... it wasnt resistant enough ...

i think that happened to me a a borer resistant birch .. yeah.. right .. bite me.. lol ..

ken
Iris GW
11 years ago
As a member of The American Chestnut Foundation, I can tell you that their testing is rigorous. The infect every tree with the blight and keep only that survive to continue into the program.

The Georgia Chapter is currently using pollen from Georgia trees to create a more southern form. Pollen from more trees in the more northern range were used in the earlier crosses.

Here is a link that might be useful: Read more on their website
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When I bought my timberland back in 1975 there still were remnants of the giant old chestnut trees. There was one old snag, a hollow old trunk that was weathered to a silvery color. It was about 7' in diameter. There were several others not quite as large. And there were places where the sprouts from the old dead trees were think in the undergrowth of stands of oak trees. I once hoped that the hypovirulent strains of the fungus that caused all the chestnuts to die would work to control the fungus, as it did in Europe, and all these sprouts would be able to grow back to replace the lost forests of chestnut. But no such luck. The sprouts are basically all gone now, largely because of deer browseing as well as repeated onslaughts of the fungus. And those magnificent silvery old dead chestnut tree trunks have all since fallen over and have almost completely rotted into the ground. --Spruce
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Brandon - have you worked with either org? Do you have a view as to whether ACCF has staying power - that it will last beyond the retirement of the senior researchers? My fear with ACCF is that it will fade away; whereas TACF seems to have the organizational strength to keep going. Although I take your point that that could be just fundraising / marketing... I had an email correspondence with ACCF that I found really strange. I had heard about an arboretum nearby that had found a multi-acre stand of surviving chestnuts a decade or so ago; and that the arboretum was working with chestnut researchers . I asked the woman at ACCF if they were working with that particular arboretum. She wrote back rather curtly that they had never heard of it and were not interested in new genetic material. Both statements I thought were really strange. It seems like they would want to be up to speed on discoveries of, and get their hands on, any surviving native genetic material... It just increased my nagging fear that they have a very narrow, insular view of their mission and how to carry it out...that its more of an academic research project than a full out effort to save the tree. Which I think is a shame.
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The college is not a secret, its SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, where I am currently finishing my undergrad. I've gotten to know some of the professors working on this project over the years and they have been working very hard on getting this to be a success and are very friendly people. I took a tissue culture course that was taught by some of the people working on the project and got to see firsthand some of the laboratory difficulties and challenges that had to be overcome to make it work. Elm grows like a weed in terms of micropropagation but chestnut is an absolute nightmare! Resin- I beleive the gene used in the chestnut project came from a species of Wheat that just happened to have some sort of natural mechanism for fighting a similar pathogen, and it happened to work. There may in fact be a group of genes being used, I have no formal training in genetics and was never introduced to that aspect of the project. For the elms I beleive this is the case, as there are several different diseases attacking them that needed to be addressed (i.e. elmy yellows, blight). I don't know too much about that project, although as part of the field trials several of the "immune" plants were planted in a group with "baseline" american elms in front of our campus library. they are monitored 24 hours a day for both security and to compare their growth to the normal seedling elms. Only the professors know which is which. Some of the biogengineered elms come from a few plants that were found thriving in the nearby solvay wastebeds in absolutely atrocious, dry, polluted, compacted conditions- the idea being that our trees should be quite urban-tolerant!
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The blight-resistant American Chestnuts that the American Chestnut Foundation are working on breeding are almost, but not quite, ready for release. Within 5 to 10 years, I think that their chestnuts will be available to the public. However, there IS a source for blight-resistant American Chestnuts of a few varieties. These trees won't preserve all the genetic variations found across the vast range of American Chestnuts, but they are blight resistant from everything I've heard and make very good trees. The company who produces and sells these trees is Oikos. Here's a weblink: http://www.oikostreecrops.com/store/home.asp Note that the page might not come up, in which case delete everything but the main website name (http://www.oikostreecrops.com/) and hit "Enter" and try again. I hope this helps in your quest to restore the sadly lost American Chestnut to your land.
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corkball
11 years ago
my understanding is they started creating the final generation about 2007 and have been increasing nut production. There have been wholesale forest plantings as well, but they still need to do a bunch of resistance testing. They are years away from general release.
http://www.acf.org/FAQ.php

There are also parallel efforts to create a pure American resistant strain by breeding various survivors. You can get some of these, but resistance would be questionable
http://www.accf-online.org/

And if that wasn't enough, they are creating franken-nuts with wheat genes, hoping to bypass all the 'nature hippie' stuff:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120412141816.htm
These also require more testing and are not publicly available.
lcadem
11 years ago
these people should really get more support. The chestnut was one of the great trees
wisconsitom
11 years ago
Then to make matters worse-and I'm not suggesting that the people involved in this don't know this-pathogens themselves mutate and change with time. Take apple scab for an example. Scab-resistant fl. crab varieties have suddenly "become susceptible" but what's really happened is that the infectious agent has changed and is now able to infect these formerly resistant varieties. It can be a moving target.

But yes, Am. chestnuts are superb trees. I hope they will one day make a strong return. Speaking of which, I've got a brother down in SW Wisconsin that is growing a few. Last time I was there, they were growing well. I'll have to inquire as to how they're doing.

+oM
arktrees
11 years ago
Absolutely correct Tom. However if you can get a generation or two into forest recombining genes with the survivors to increase genetic variation, then you would stand a chance of co-existance. From what I remember the resistance in the Asian Chestnut is thought to be due to one or two genes. If these genes have not been overcome by the blight in native regions, then they aren't likely to be overcame by the blight here.

Arktrees
greenthumbzdude
11 years ago
There are some backcrosses out already. They are like 80% american and 20% chinese. If you become a member of the Aerican chestnut Foundation they will send you seeds. I heard that the final generation will not be availabe to the public until 2020.
rosefolly
11 years ago
It would bring me great pleasure if a resistant strain of this tree were developed. I would love to see a million of them planted in the forests of eastern United States. I do love the oaks that have taken their place in the canopy, but the chestnuts are something beyond amazing.

Rosefolly
lcadem
11 years ago
How does the flavour of the american chestnut compare to castanea sativa... roasted chestnut is THE Christmas snack back in my old country...
jocelynpei
11 years ago
American chestnuts are a bit sweeter than sativa chestnuts. They tend to be smaller too. Incidently, many woodlot owners here are doing what one poster suggested...planting a couple dozen of mollissima in their woods and letting nature introgress them. I don't know how many genes for full resistance, but even if it's 2 or 3 pairs, the squirrels plant so many that some are bound to get the right combinations. It helps to get a more timber type Chinese parent . We are lucky here to have some Wolfville seedlot trees where over half the seedlings have good forest form. The rest, grin, want to be bushes. The bush type soon gets overtopped in the woods and doesn't stay in the breeding pool. My oldest trees are 6 years old, so I have no seednuts to offer yet.
Jocelyn

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