American Chestnut - new cultivar

[jimmyj]

Thanks to Docheb and Forester2 for bringing up this info about a new blight resistant American Chestnut tree. I found it very interesting and thought it should have it's own thread for more people to read.

Future of American chestnut takes root by Zoar Valley with bioengineered trees : Southern Suburbs : The Buffalo News

 

[jimmyj]

OK, well so I thought it was interesting.........:laughing:

 

[Ridgewalker]

Thanks for bringing that back the top, that was a good read. I would plant a few on my place if they become available to the masses.

It's a shame was people have done to the planet, I think the indians had the right idea. Too bad we couldn't learn from them before it was too late.

 

[gregsons]

I world love to plant some as well. I wonder if they will be made ava. from the county dept of conservation in the spring. The trees I got and planted from them this spring have really taken well.

 

[captaincrab55]

Just wondering if the nuts will be Gluten Free, after the bioengineering with Wheat???

 

[clemsonfor]

Theres a guy with the american chesnut foundation, that i met who lives in Senaca, SC and they use his farm as a nursery. He has planted there the different generations and percantages of Am. and Chineese chestnut that they have developed. He gets a good many each year but they are for reasearch and he is the a "field study " property. I have no idea what his name was now but im sure if you contact the Am. chesnut society or association (not sure which) and ask about the guy in Senaca they can put you in contact.

He will show you around his place, i never made it up there to see it but he offered it and i think will show anyone if you set up an appointment.

RidgeWalker, in a way your correct and a way not. The Chestnut blight is what killed the trees not man, logging, deforestation mineing or anything else. The things still exist in the moutains they just dont get much bigger than 3" in diameter till they die back to the roots. The reason is that the spores get into the cracked back when i furrows at an older age and that is what infects the tree causing "top" dieback. The roots of 500 year old chestnuts still exist, which is the reason they can do this genetic work. Some trees have a greater natural tollerance for the blight. Some are root killed maybe, some are killed when they reach 1" and some are resistant that they reach 20 ft tall and 3" or so. So you are correct in that man caused it by importing chineese chestnut, which is blight resistant, to america which then killed all the American Chestnuts back to the ground.

And in way your wrong, this is a god created or allah, monkies or whoever you beleive our creater to be, so it just unforchantly made its way to a species that had not developed a resistance.

-Nate

 

[dave1949]

Thanks for bringing that back the top, that was a good read. I would plant a few on my place if they become available to the masses.

It's a shame was people have done to the planet, I think the indians had the right idea. Too bad we couldn't learn from them before it was too late.

Well, there is pretty good evidence the Indians along the Northeast coast did controlled forest burns. The supposition is this made travel and hunting easier, and favored large oaks and beeches which produce nuts for deer/turkey and man. I do understand your point though. We sort of stumble around in ignorance on many of these issues.

Clemsfor - Didn't have any idea there are still viable Am. chestnut roots, thanks for sharing that. I have Am. Elm trees that will come from seed and do okay until they get to 4"-6" dbh, then die over the next 2-3 years. Usually from the top down. I keep thinking, someday, one could make it if it had a mutation giving it resistance.
Dave.

 

[clemsonfor]

Well, there is pretty good evidence the Indians along the Northeast coast did controlled forest burns. The supposition is this made travel and hunting easier, and favored large oaks and beeches which produce nuts for deer/turkey and man. I do understand your point though. We sort of stumble around in ignorance on many of these issues.

Clemsfor - Didn't have any idea there are still viable Am. chestnut roots, thanks for sharing that. I have Am. Elm trees that will come from seed and do okay until they get to 4"-6" dbh, then die over the next 2-3 years. Usually from the top down. I keep thinking, someday, one could make it if it had a mutation giving it resistance.
Dave.

This viable Am. root stock is what the new strain is from like i said. They take a Am. chesnut and a chineese chesnut (blight resistant) and cross them, so now you have a 50/50 chineese/Am tree. Then that off spring is first genereation cross, then it is crossed again with a pure chineese giving a second generation that is i guess 25/75% Am/chineese chestnut and so forth. They do this while planting each generation to see which is most blight resistant on farms like the guy i mentioned. The most tollearnt ones that grow best and are blight resistant keep getting crossed till the Am is low in % of the offspring tree. We are somewhere at this point of the game, with reasearch testing.

The theory is to get an offspring that is partial Am. but mostly chineese, get a disease resistant offspring that will grow to maturity, then start crossing them back with american chestnuts till you get a tree that is back in the 75-90% american chestnut and 10-25% chineese chestnut, that will now be blight resistant. They will continuing to cross the chineese out of it, till it is a small percentage.

This is just basic genetics and selecting the traits you want so its like anything cattle dogs tomatoes etc.

-Nate

 

[Chuck52]

Looks like in this case they are trying some bioengineering in addition to standard hybridizing techniques.

I grew up in East Tennessee and remember hiking in the Smokies. There was at least one trail....Rainbow Falls maybe....with a marker pointing out American Chestnut seedlings coming up from the roots of the trees killed by the fungus. It said they'd get so big and then succumb to the blight. A friend of ours found a chestnut log on private land once. This was maybe in the 70's, and the log had been laying since the blight hit. There was enough sound wood left to make a little bench out of it and it sat on the porch of their mountain cabin.

Dutch elm disease is another fungal disease. Turns out there is yet another fungus that inhibits the dutch elm fungus and is also insecticidal, Metarrhizium anisopliae. I check the literature every once in a while to see if anyone has tried using M. anisopliae to protect elm trees, since it seems like a natural thing to try. Not only does it inhibit the other fungus, but it also kills the insect vector. If I had another lifetime, I'd like to study that kind of thing.

Chuck

 

[forgeblast]

The blight resistant varity is about a 7th douglass cross. they back cross and remove all the chinese chestnut genitics until only the bligh resistance stays. that way you have the taste and timber of the american chestnut with the resistance of the chinese.
I do have some american chestnut planted on my property, they are only 3 years old. I would love to get my hands on some of these crosses but i heard all the stock for the next couple of years is going to federal land to help repopulate there first.
Yes there is the dutch elm disease, its killed a lot of tress on my property, they start off strong and then go quickly.
You also have to watch for eastern filbert bilght, it attacks filberts (hazlenuts) but in oregon they have developed (using similar methods of crossing) a bight resistant varitey.
If you go to the american chestnut society/association/organization you will see how they take pollen and isolate flowers and then by hand pollinate each flower to start the next generation of crosses. its taken years for them to get this far. i think the douglass crosses are going on 70 years.