interspersed with gray trunks of giant chestnut trees, killed by the
chestnut blight.
William Powell's lab is investigating the genes that offer resistance to the
chestnut blight.
WELL BRED Strategies to beat the
chestnut blight fall into two main groups: attempts to breed trees that resist it and attempts to enlist one of its biological enemies to quash it.
3) Chestnuts (7-11 tons/acre): Prior to the
chestnut blight, the native American chestnut was a major source of mast for livestock, primarily swine, and was "the corn tree.
If you objectively evaluate the ecological damage wrought by just three agents--white pine blister rust,
chestnut blight and gypsy moth--it would be obvious that these introduced agents.
That's especially clear for the sturdy, fast-growing American chestnut, which was one of the dominant hardwood trees in the eastern United States until a fungal infection, known as the
chestnut blight, wiped out nearly all of them during the first half of the 20th century.
Chestnut blight soon followed, and this blight spread rapidly across the continent, killing millions of mature chestnut trees.
Castanea dentata was once a major component of northeast forests before the arrival of the
chestnut blight Cryphonectria parasitica in the early 1900's.
Now, however, supplies of chestnut are generally scarce and expensive because of the devastation caused by
chestnut blight.
Unfortunately,
Chestnut blight is also alive and well and these small trees seldom live to bear fruit.
Nursery stock transported both American
chestnut blight and the woolly adelgid aphid, which thinned conifer forests.
Gypsy moth, Kudzu vine, Dutch elm disease,
chestnut blight, starlings and Mediterranean fruit flies come easily to mind.
