Breeding program aims to restore a classic American tree

Breeding program aims to restore a classic American tree - By ...
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Growing disease-resistant American chestnuts in Hope
Breeding program aims to restore a classic
American tree
By Sarah E. Reynolds | May 30, 2013
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Photo by: Sarah E. Reynolds
Mary Bok, right, talks with Eric Evans, vice president and breeding coordinator of The American Chestnut
Foundation's Maine Chapter. They are standing in a chestnut orchard planted on Bok's land in Hope.
Hope chestnut orchards
HOPE — Talk to Eric Evans of Camden and he's likely to tell
you a long story — one that began a century ago. Evans is the
vice president and breeding coordinator of The American
Chestnut Foundation's (TACF) Maine Chapter. As such, he is
deeply involved in TACF's six-generation back-cross breeding
program to produce American chestnut trees able to resist the
chestnut blight fungus that decimated the tree a hundred years
ago.
Before the blight, Evans said, the American chestnut was “the
single most important tree species” in the eastern United States,
affording excellent lumber and abundant food for animals – food
that has not completely been replaced by other nut trees. The
restoration effort is a work of decades and involves a complex
process of repeated cross-breeding, testing trees by inoculating
them with live, laboratory-grown fungus, culling trees and
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planting nuts from the hardiest trees with the most desirable
characteristics.
The Maine Chapter's website describes the program: “Our Maine
Chapter of TACF is one of about a dozen state chapters conducting a back-cross breeding program
coordinated by TACF’s research farms in Meadowview, Va., using local American chestnuts as the
mother trees to ensure that blight-resistant trees coming out of our breeding will be most ideally
adapted to our Maine growing conditions. We have back-cross breeding and seed orchards in 14
towns from Lovell to Bradley.”
Three of the back-cross orchards are in Hope, the most recent one on land owned by Mary Bok. The
program asks land owners to care for the chestnut seedlings planted on their land and pays no fee
for the use of the land. Nevertheless, Bok said she wanted to get involved with the program
because, “I heard the story about the tree and its struggles to survive…I respect Eric [Evans] and his
projects enormously.” About 240 1-year-old chestnut seedlings were planted on Bok's land in April.
They will be injected with the lab-grown fungus after they start producing nuts, in about five years,
Evans said.
The trees will be culled, leaving only the best 10 specimens, he said, and for several years after that
nuts will be collected from them to be planted in the seed orchards that will nourish the fifth
generation in the six-generation program.
Also in Hope is Harold Moser's farm, which contains another back-cross orchard, this one planted
during several years, starting in 2006 and ending in 2012. Most of the trees on Moser's land are 6 to
8 years old, and the larger trees there will be inoculated with the fungus this June to test for blight
resistance.
The fungus made its way to the U.S. from Asia around the turn of the 20th century, and by 1950,
“except for the shrubby root sprouts the species continually produces (and which also quickly
become infected), the keystone species that had covered 188 million acres of eastern forests had
disappeared,” according to the TACF's website.
As Evans explained, the blight fungus, “is not generally a pathogen in Asia,” where it evolved along
with the Chinese chestnut, a smaller, more rounded tree than its tall, straight-growing American
cousin. Chinese chestnuts are more apt to be used for nut production, whereas the American trees
were used for lumber, he said.
Because of the Chinese chestnut's blight resistance, the first generation of the breeding program was
simply a cross of American and Chinese trees. This took place at TACF's research farms in Virginia.
The resulting trees have been back-crossed for three successive generations with American
chestnuts native to the place where the disease-resistant descendants would eventually be planted.
So, for example, the Maine Chapter received pollen from second back-cross trees in Virginia
selected for their blight resistance, which was then used to manually pollinate native Maine
American chestnuts in order to keep the Maine trees' adaptations for local conditions.
Maine is on the northern edge of the American chestnut's growing range, Evans said, and tends to
grow at lower elevations here than in southern New England or further south, because it doesn't like
extreme cold. South of New England, he said, it grows in the mountains, where drainage is good.
After the first generation of trees in the Maine program started producing nuts, those from trees
selected for disease resistance and American characteristics were planted and allowed to pollinate
each other. Through successive testing, culling and planting seeds from selected trees, American
chestnuts with good disease resistance will be bred. Then TACF will trademark a name — probably
“Restoration Chestnut,” Evans said — and seeds will be sold commercially. They likely will not be
available to the public until 2025 or later, according to the Maine Chapter's website.
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In addition to land owners' donations of growing space and day-to-day maintenance, the project,
which has no paid staff in Maine, depends on volunteer labor for planting trees and harvesting nuts,
Evans said. Volunteers come from land trusts, the Small Woodlot Owners Association of Maine and
conservation groups like the Nature Conservancy, as well as interested individuals.
As breeding coordinator for the Maine program, Evans' volunteer work takes up a lot of his time,
especially in the spring. He determines what happens when, oversees the Maine orchards and
attends meetings at the TACF's research farm in Virginia.
He offered a story from his childhood as a partial explanation for why he puts so much of his time
into a project that may not be complete in his lifetime. As a youth in 1960, Evans went on a
camping trip with his Boy Scout troop in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, and saw many of
the chestnut trees that had been destroyed by the blight.
“It made quite an impression on me,” he said.
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Sarah E. Reynolds has been a reporter and writer for more than 20 years,
winning awards from the Maine Press Association and other professional
organizations. She loves to read, hike and play word games.
Sarah Reynolds
Sarah E. Reynolds is a
reporter for the Camden
Herald.
236-8511
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