Charles Maynard smiled as he held a petri dish containing a cluster of light green cells that would someday grow into a rare towering American chestnut tree.

Maynard, a professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, is working to save the traditional American chestnut tree from a fungus that almost completely eliminated the species.

‘Each one of these is a very precious commodity,’ said Maynard, also director of the American Chestnut Research and Restoration Center.

He and William Powell, another professor at ESF, have worked for 25 years and examined close to 10,000 samples from chestnut tree seeds to develop a genetically modified American chestnut tree that is resistant to the deadly fungus.

The two professors planted 10 of the transgenic chestnut trees at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, N.Y., on April 17.

Powell said planting the chestnut trees there is historically significant because the chestnut blight was first identified by a scientist at the botanical garden after it infected trees at the Bronx Zoo in 1904.

When Powell and Maynard first started researching the chestnut trees, the two found little existing information on them, Powell said. They then had to develop their own techniques to create a tree that is resistant to the blight.

These techniques include examining samples from chestnut trees to find the gene that is resistant to the fungus.

The fungus produces spores that get into the wounds of the trees, which can grow to a diameter as wide as four people and prevent it from maturing and growing larger than a bush, Powell said.

However, the roots of the trees are usually not destroyed, a factor that could help the researchers come up with the solution by mixing this trait with other traits that prevent the fungus from attacking the trees, Powell said.

‘We are taking genes from disease-fighting plants, like wheat, to make gene combinations that are resistant to the blight,’ said Kristen Stewart, a graduate student at ESF who is also one of four lab technicians working on the project.

She said researchers are using genes from Asian chestnut trees, which are smaller and less durable than the American chestnut.

The Asian chestnut was introduced after the fungus wiped out nearly 4 billion American chestnut trees in the early 1900s due to their economic importance as a quality source of wood that is resistant to rotting.

Stewart also said the American chestnut that once dominated the East Coast is important to wildlife because it provides food for squirrels and deer.

‘The American chestnut is a keystone species, meaning that it has a ripple effect on other plants and animals in the environment,’ Stewart said.

Powell said he hopes the trees he planted in the New York Botanical Garden will help the American chestnut tree make a comeback within the next 10 years, but the process could take much longer.

‘The neat thing is we are kind of going full cycle,’ Powell said. ‘Hopefully the trees will start being restored at the same place they started dying from.’

smhazlit@syr.edu 

Published on April 22, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Shannon: smhazlit@syr.edu