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Date: 1/27/2022
GRANVILLE — “It’s a story of tragic loss and a story of great hope,” said John Meiklejohn when he spoke on Jan. 19 in a Zoom presentation hosted by the Granville Public Library.
Meiklejohn is a volunteer orchard manager in Granville at one of the 37 research orchards established by the Massachusetts-Rhode Island Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation.
For thousands of years, the American chestnut tree was the dominant tree in hardwood forests all along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains. Called “the Redwood of the East,” this keystone species provided abundant food for a variety of wildlife and was used by humans for many purposes.
Lightweight and highly resistant to rot, the wood made great utility poles and railroad ties, and can still be found in the beams and floors of many old houses. It was easy to work, and had beautiful color for furniture and musical instruments. It was a cash crop for many rural families who gathered and sold the nuts to street vendors in cities.
“It was the first ‘fast food,’” said Meiklejohn. “And the last that was good for you.”
The lower Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts was a core habitat for this tree. This all changed when a fungus blight, inadvertently imported from Asia, found its way to the eastern United States. First noticed in 1904, at the Bronx Zoo in New York City, the blight spread fast, and by the 1950s it had killed 4 billion American chestnut trees throughout the species’ range.
But they didn’t completely die. The fungus blight can’t survive in the soil, and for over a century, many of those doomed trees have been sending up shoots from their roots. Hikers can still see them today in the forests. A few are able to grow to reproductive size until the blight kills off the above-ground growth. Though these shoots have hung on, they are considered “functionally extinct,” as they no longer have an ecological role.
Like the blight, despair about saving the trees spread. None of the early attempts at saving them worked. But “not everyone had given up,” Meiklejohn said. Building on the work of a geneticist, Phillip Rutter began experimenting with pollinating the blossoms of the American chestnut tree with pollen from the Chinese chestnut. The Chinese chestnut evolved with the fungus blight in Asia, and has a natural resistance to its damage.
The American Chestnut Foundation (ACF) was formed in 1983, and since then has been backcross-breeding these two species. It takes five to seven years to reproduce another generation of chestnuts. ACF began this process at their research Meadowview Farm in Virginia. The nuts from this generation are saved, planted, and the resultant resistant trees are “backcrossed” with another American chestnut tree. After four generations, the trees have 94 percent American chestnut genes, while retaining at least some of the blight resistance inherited from the Chinese chestnut.
The trees at Meiklejohn’s orchards are third- and fourth-generation backcrosses. These trees are deliberately inoculated with the blight, and only the most resistant are allowed to grow. In this way, the ACF hopes to eventually produce a tree that is highly resistant to the blight and can be reintroduced to the eastern forests.
A new biotechnology is holding promise that this slow task can be jump-started. Researchers at the ACF lab have inserted a blight-resistant gene from the wheat plant into the American chestnut and produced a clone named Darling54, which thrives even when inoculated with the blight.
This wheat gene is found naturally in many foods that humans and wildlife have been eating forever. It is not found in the American chestnut. Because it is a genetically modified organism, or GMO, it must go through an approval process in several federal government agencies. It is expected the decision for its use could take two more years.
If the transgenic tree is approved, it has one drawback. Because it is a clone, it cannot provide genetic diversity. The American Chestnut Foundation is seeking pure American chestnut trees that are still producing viable nuts throughout its traditional range. They will preserve these reproducing survivors in germplasm conservation orchards and then cross them with the transgenic tree. The new tree will have the strength of all types of trees.
“It is an unbelievable opportunity to bring back a keystone species,” said Mark Young, who attended Meiklejohn’s talk.
Meiklejohn laid out the ways people can help. He encouraged those interested in saving the chestnut tree to become a member of the American Chestnut Foundation or one of its 17 state chapters, at www.afc.org. Anyone who finds reproducing chestnuts in the woods should contact marichapter@acf.org.
“Every chestnut orchard manager is always looking for volunteers during the growing season,” he added. Those who wish to join a work party should contact Meiklejohn at 413-348-2848 or jmiserve183@gmail.com.
“Everyday citizens can play a role in bringing back America’s most beloved tree,” Meiklejohn said.