Does anyone know the progress of the American Chestnut Foundation???

[Roger Feeley]

These folks are working to breed a blight resistant American Chestnut by crossing with the Asian Chestnut and then back-crossing to get back to the American version but with the blight resistant characteristic.

Every year or two, I look on their website to see when I might plant an American Chestnut. For the life of me, I can't find that simple bit of information. I can get baby trees but they say that they will succumb in 15 years or so. Well, that's not good.

If I read it right the GMO guys got involved and isolated the blight gene, fired up CRISPR or something and now they are working on a version.

But all my elderly brain wants is, "when?"

Are there any Creekers following this?

[Tom Stenzel]

The last thing I read about it is this:

https://reason.com/2020/10/13/the-usda-should-let-people-plant-blight-resistant-american-chestnut-trees/

The article is pretty rah-rah. Other articles I've seen were optimistic but not at the "we are ready now" point. There's politics involved, of course. The pro GMO crowd and the anti GMO crowd are a 'tussling. It's implied but not really stated the problem is that a modified tree would be considered an invasive species.

If it were available I would plant one even if Michigan is up against the northern boundaries of the tree. Worse thing that could happen is that it wouldn't thrive.

-Tom

[Roger Feeley]

My ideal would be to have a couple of chestnuts and a couple of hickory trees. I had a chance to work with some hickory recently and developed a whole new respect for the stuff.

[Ted Calver]

I have to believe the science. Wish this restoration project (https://www.esf.edu/chestnut/about.asp) were well underway (https://www.esf.edu/chestnut/progress-report.htm).