Photo: AVTG/iStockphoto
Once plentiful, the American chestnut tree has largely disappeared, killed off by a deadly fungus that began felling the trees 100 years ago.
William Powell, a plant biotechnology expert at ESF, and his colleague Charles Maynard, have incorporated a gene into the test trees that they derived from a breed of wheat. The gene has been shown to increase resistance in hybrid poplar trees to fungal pathogens.
Not only do the trees produce chestnuts — great for feeding wildlife and humans alike — but their wood is rot-resistant and fast-growing, Powell said, which was important for the lumber industry.
"We really want to bring [the chestnut] back. The only way it can come back is to make a resistant tree, because no one has been able to control the blight any other way," Powell said in a statement.
The hybrid chestnut trees are slated to be planted at a test site in the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx on April 18. The location is significant.
"That's a stone's throw — literally across the street — from where the blight was discovered in 1904," Maynard said in a statement.
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