Mainly we have derived our stock from Tim Termini of the Sothern New York Chapter of the ACF. who collects wild nuts from NY state, he has the locality information on these trees.

as of recentley two of our trees come from the ACCF has primarily harvested their seed stock from wild trees, as-well, these are from Virginia, while they do not represent our local ecotypic tree, they are useful for their genetic diversity they will inevitably will provide. I digress in saying that gaining local stock of American chestnuts is limited and those that are present maybe bottlenecked to some extent. But I stand firm in supporting our pure AC’s.

While hybrids can be used I am not 100% against them, my poster was not necessarily made to demonize hybrids, but that hybrids are not the only option to protecting these trees. This poster was presented at Rutgers New Brunswick N.J. and I knew GMO’s would be a contentious topic and spark interests. While hybrids can certainly be used as they have proved effective against Phytophora infections, The conservationist in me wants to preserve the pure organism (whether this is possible, we will see).

I have not looked into Oaks, albeit related, oaks are much more speciose I do know Oaks have species complexes and closely kin than the chestnut with around 20 species occurring in the state depending on who you ask. We have two Castanea, with C. dentata and C. pumlia occurring (albeit sparsely) in the far south. American chestnut forms a natural hybrid with C. pumila (Casntea x neglecta). So some hybridization does occur with the chestnut however it is sparse.

That’s what makes genetics interesting. If these are conserved genes, then these problems influenced evolution ages ago and speak a broader understand of trees. Issues like juvenile vs reproductively mature tissue in plants is across all plants and still not understood. (though there is interesting research an “epigenetic clock”)

Tyler –

thanks for the reply and giving this some thought!

1. what ecotypes are you getting from ACCF? Are they local to William Patterson? If so, how local?
2. Why would hybrids not be a part of a program which could preserve a local eco-type?
3. have you done any research into the hybrid swarms which occur naturally in genera like Quercus?

Sara

Thank you, what you bring up is very interesting! I haven’t seen this research before, but I will have to look into it. I think it would be very informative, though a genus or species can always evolve in unexpected ways.

Hi John,

Thank you for the ideas! I will consider that when I go back to analyze again. Glad you enjoyed the talk.

While I have seen this chestnut chat, I am a staunch believer in preserving our local eco-types, although the definition of what a “pure chestnut” is exactly seems to be hard to define. it is the plants that have gone through the filter of evolution in their respective regions that defines the pure chestnuts we had here on the east coast. Those trees that have hybridized and have had gene flow in the past (over 10’s of 1000’s of years and hundreds of successive generations) have had time to evolve and speciate into their own organism. These plants are different from those that are artificially produced by humans in 20> or so generations These trees may still retain some prominent Asian Castenea characteristics in their genetics. While the information does not I have doesn’t account for hybrids (I apologize), and the science is still a bit young to tell if we definitely need hybrids or not. I still believe in focusing on crossing some of our pure trees, at-least here on our campus.

Nice talk. Science usually involves improvement of experimental protocols.

You also mentioned that you plan on revising your graphs. I’d suggest grouping the two chinquapins together, then all the Chinese together, then European and American, not necessarily in that order, followed by the backcrosses, and using the colors on that basis.

Thank you!
These are not in an orchard. They are away from any other chestnuts (of a flowering age) so the central plot is the only source of pollen.

The six methods, roughly in increasing intensity of fire, are backing fire(1) (only lighting the back of the plot against the wind), wide strip fires perpendicular to the wind (5), parallel strip fire (2), dense perpendicular strip fires (4), spot fires (6), and ring fires (3). Ring fires are the most intense due to the chimney-like funnel of rising air that draws in new air, fueling the fire. The numbers I gave correlate to the order of these as shown in the diagram on my poster.

I got my degree from Rutgers New Brunswick, not all that far down the road from you (but in Biochemistry unrelated to chestnut) so it’s nice to see chestnut work going on elsewhere in Jersey.

I think you mentioned that your AC nuts come from the Chestnut Cooperators – they’ve been devoted to not using backcross methods, so I’m curious how they feel about transgenic efforts, if you have any sense of that.

And did you arrive on campus already aware of the plight of the American Chestnut, or did you pick up on it after you arrived? Do you know of any students who have gotten caught up in the enthusiasm that aren’t majors in your department, which I suppose is something like Ecology and Evolution? Are any seedlings planted out more or less in the middle of the campus, or are they all off in research areas?

Yes, we will not know by which method the trees were pollinated. But, if the rates of pollen captured match the rate of fertilized burs geographically, that would support the wind pollination theory. If they do not overlap, that could support insect pollination (for example, if the trees are equally fertilized in all directions despite a strong easterly wind).

Yes once again! They are D58 trees, so we had to get approval through the USDA. I’m not sure about APHIS. And there are no known wild chestnuts in the area.

The seedlings are only 6 inches tall or so. I agree- I’m not too optimistic that they will have the energy stored to vigorously resprout. I am very interested in running more burn experiments in the future on larger trees.