Billions of American chestnut trees once towered from Maine to Mississippi. But about a century ago, an exotic fungus nearly drove the tree out of existence. Today, researchers are growing American chestnut trees that can withstand that fungus.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Kyra LoPiccolo crouched in front of a small, white foam box under the hot summer sun. She opened the cooler and from the ice plucked a tiny vial of pollen — a potential salve for an entire species.
These trees once ruled the canopies of much of Appalachia, with billions of mature American chestnut trees that towered in leafy forests from Maine to Mississippi. But around the beginning of the 20th century, an exotic fungus nearly drove the tree out of existence. Today, they still sprout in the wild but rarely reach maturity. Outside of growers’ orchards, scientists say, the tree is “functionally extinct.
“We’re making a path for saving other tree species, and it might even go beyond trees,” said Bill Powell, director of SUNY ESF’sGaining approval to start planting the nuts, Powell said, would be a “big, big success.” Still, he acknowledged this is something no one has done before — and would require massive effort. His team would also need help to spread blight-resistant chestnuts across hundreds of miles of mountains.
Its straight-grained timber was sought by furniture fabricators and musical instrument makers. Its rot-resistant wood was ideal for the railroad ties, telegraph poles and fence posts that helped connect and carve up the young nation. Its lumber held generations of Americans from cradle to coffin. Workers at the Bronx Zoo were the first to notice, in 1904, the festering wounds. By the following spring, nearly every chestnut in the park showed signs of infection.
A professor of forest pathology in Syracuse, Powell had written his PhD dissertation on chestnut blight. In the 1990s, while paging through summaries of recently published papers in his office, he had an aha! moment: He spotted a gene that could protect the chestnut.The fungus infecting chestnut trees thrives by secreting a chemical called oxalic acid, which kills cells and allows the pathogen to feast on the dead tissue.
“We were even told 10 years ago, before we started this process, that it probably wouldn’t be realistic for our little university research project to do this,” said Newhouse, who is responsible for guiding Darling 58 through the regulatory process.The group has done its own testing on both regular and transgenic chestnuts, comparing effects on bumblebees pollinating their flowers, insects feasting on their fresh leaves and frog tadpoles gobbling up their decomposing litter.
“There are studies coming out weekly that show just how much we don’t know about forest ecosystems,” she said.
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Gene editing could revive a nearly lost tree. Not everyone is on board.Billions of American chestnut trees once towered from Maine to Mississippi. But about a century ago, an exotic fungus nearly drove the tree out of existence. Today, researchers are growing American chestnut trees that can withstand that fungus.
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