For nearly 30 years, researchers at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry have been studying the disease that wiped out four billion American chestnut trees in the 1900s, in hopes of reestablishing the population of the majestic tree with the help of modern science.
A century ago, one out of four trees in heavily populated areas of the East Coast were American chestnut trees. But the chestnut population from northern Georgia to Maine was decimated by a
thought to have arrived with the importation of Chinese chestnut trees.
"It was a very important tree to our history, to the economy in the past," said SUNY ESF professor William Powell, co-founder of the American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project.
Powell's team first worked to identify the genome that could protect the historically significant trees from blight. Next came the first plantings of genetically modified seeds; now the team is seeking for approvals from the federal government and preparing to distribute 10,000 blight-resistant American chestnut trees to jump start the effort to restore the tree to its native range in North America.
Powell said the key was finding a gene in the tree that can detoxify the acid the blight releases to kill the trees cells.
"That's basically what our transgenic American chestnuts do. They allow the tree to coexist with the fungus," Powell said.
He said he believes they have run enough tests to begin compiling applications to the USDA, FDA and possibly the EPA for review and regulation approval for public distribution.
They're also writing papers about their research for publication, and preparing production orchards for the first 10,000 trees.
"We want to make sure we have orchards set up and everything because there's going to be a big demand," Powell said.
While the project isn't a non-profit, he said they only want to cover the cost of the trees and not make a profit off them.
The project has spent around $6 million so far, with more expenses expected by the time the genetically modified trees are approved by the right agencies, Powell said.
Powell said he expects to have all of the paperwork submitted for USDA review this year, and the review process could take several years.
The project works with the American Chestnut Foundation, which has a program that breeds the American chestnut tree with blight resistant Chinese chestnut trees.
Jared Westbrook, the director of science for the foundation, said it's been largely a grassroots effort to start the breeding program at the foundation and the project at SUNY-ESF.
"We need each other," he said.
The foundation plans to take the New York trees from the SUNY-ESF project, when they become available to the public, and breed them with different strands of the American chestnut for variation in the species, Westbrook said.
Andrew Newhouse is a senior research support specialist who has worked for the project for eleven years.
"As the trees grew up, I was kind of moving with them I guess," he said with a laugh.
Newhouse says his job as a scientist includes spreading the word about the trees so the public can make educated decisions about how they want to use them for restoration. Biotechnology that's similar to what is used in the project is moving so fast that it could be used for other environmental applications, Newhouse said.
"What really excites me, more broadly, is thinking beyond chestnut to other species or ecosystems that are threatened that could be helped with that technology," he said.