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Researchers turn to biotechnology to save chestnut trees in U.S.
By Jess Siart
Posted: 11/5/09, 2:42 AM EST Section: News
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The center is based at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Bray Hall and aims to restore the chestnut tree to New York and, eventually, the United States.
Once a staple in forest ecosystems, the American chestnut tree was virtually eliminated by the chestnut-blight fungus by 1940. The blight was introduced in the early 1900s by Asian chestnut trees brought to New York as orchard trees, and has killed more than four billion trees.
The blight produces an acid, which is also found in deck cleaner. The acid kills the trees by lowering the wood's pH, which causes cell walls to collapse and destroys protein.
The center is using biotechnology to splice different kinds of plant genes into American chestnut trees to make them resistant to the fungus, said Bill Powell, a co-director of the American Chestnut Research and Restoration Center.
"We're trying to find one, two or three genes that we can put into the tree to make it resistant and then use that for restoration," Powell said.
Research on the chestnut tree started at ESF in the 1980s, but the center was officially created in the late 1990s.
The chestnut tree was once a valuable part of the environment. Animals depended on chestnuts to fatten up before winter, and when the trees died many animal populations decreased. "If we bring them back, it might allow areas to support larger numbers of wildlife," Powell said.
The chestnut tree was also an important part of America's architecture industry. Chestnut wood is durable and doesn't have to be pressure treated to prevent rot. Because of its rot resistance, chestnut wood was used in shingles, train tracks, telephone poles and house building, said Charles Maynard, co-director of the American Chestnut Research and Restoration Center and a professor of forest and natural resources management at ESF.
Once they identify a usable gene, scientists will place the genes into specific types of plant tissue that are able to regenerate a whole plant, Maynard said.
Using a gene to regenerate a whole plant is not an easy process, Powell said.
"Most of the two decades that we've been working on this has been development of a regeneration technique where you can basically regenerate a whole plant from a single cell," he said.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Paul Barker
posted 11/13/09 @ 5:45 AM EST
I am a little confused about the exact progress.
According to the imformation obtained at
http://media.www.clarksonintegrator.com/media/storage/paper280/news/2009/09/08/News/Chestnut. (Continued…)
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