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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] American Chestnut/ACCF

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  • From: list@ginda.us
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] American Chestnut/ACCF
  • Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 21:31:25 -0400


On Jun 15, 2004, at 2:45 PM, Lucky Pittman wrote:

At 05:42 PM 6/15/2004 +0000, Tanis wrote:
I happened to see the May 04 issue of Discovery magazine; article about progress in breeding a blight-resistant population of american chestnuts, or at least finding a fungus which will fight the blight. I found it interesting enough to mention on this list.

Tanis,
Couldn't access the entire article, but since it mentioned Gary Griffin, I'm presuming it detailed the work of Gary, his wife Louise, the VA Tech folks, and all the American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation volunteers who are working to 'revive' the American Chestnut with a breeding program utilizing only 'pure' American chestnut genetics.
ACCF, being largely a volunteer organization, often seems to take a back seat in media coverage to The American Chestnut Foundation, which appears to be better funded - but TACF is using an infusion of Chinese chestnut genetics to provide blight resistance, rather than selecting pure American trees which exhibit innate resistance to infection with the blight fungus.

For anyone interested, please check out the ACCF website at:
http://ipm.ppws.vt.edu/griffin/accf.html

Lucky



Although from what I hear, the American Chestnut Foundation has isolated the ~6 genes that determine resistance in Chinese Chestnuts, and are backbreeding with American Chestnut to create a hybrid with those six genes and nearly nothing else from the Chinese tree. I thought it was a neat idea.

Ginda





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