#americanchestnut — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #americanchestnut, aggregated by home.social.
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The US Department of Agriculture has just approved the release of a genetically engineered (GE or genetically modified) American chestnut tree into the wild. If other US government departments agree and these #GE trees are planted in US forests, they could spread across the border, threatening the future of endangered wild American #chestnut trees in Canada and important chestnut conservation work. A #petition to stop the wild release of #gmo #AmericanChestnut #trees
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Four billion American chestnut trees, gone in decades. The roots are still alive underground — still trying to grow back. Still being killed every time they surface. by @daylightatheism
#AmericanChestnut #Conservation #Ecology #Biotech #NaturalHistory
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American chestnut restoration update time. (Note: if you read up about the story of American chestnut trees, you can skip "The Overstory" by Richard Powers.)
The American Chestnut Foundation used to support SUNY ESF (College of Environment, Science, & Forestry) efforts to genetically engineer an American chestnut tree with a gene that expresses an acid that neutralizes the blight that started killing North American chestnut trees over a century ago. This GE chestnut variant was called “Darling 58,” the Darling being the last name of one of the principal researchers, and 58 being the number of different variations they’d tried out up til then. However, it was discovered in 2023 that ESF had mixed up their varieties and the strain they had actually been testing and propagating as their most likely candidate was Darling 54, which turned out to be missing an important American chestnut gene. Between that error, ongoing observations that trees that were homozygous for the blight-resistant gene had high mortality rates, and the revelation that ESF were partnering with private companies that sought to commercialize the new chestnut stock in contradiction with the TANF non-profit mission, TANF withdrew their support. Even though they are not opposed to genetically engineering trees in general.
The USDA just completed a review of Darling 54, and cleared it for further research and development. To me and many others, including the American Chestnut Cooperators' Foundation, this is bad news. The flaws in Darling 54 make it an unlikely candidate for restoration, but more importantly, non-GE methods for chestnut restoration are underway and making progress. One tactic in this effort is to breed resistant American chestnut individuals together to create a larger resistant population. The other is breeding American chestnuts with Chinese chestnuts, which are blight-resistant but too short to succeed in wild North American forests.
It takes five years from germination to even determine whether a tree is affected by the blight, and chestnuts don't produce fruit until they're 20 years old. Given this long timeframe, it's hard to see how ESF can meet the demands of rigorous scientific testing of Darling 54 within a timeframe that is profitable to their private sector partners, whose aims include creating biomass cash crops of chestnuts. If these trees were released to the wild, there is a risk of truly eliminating the American chestnut, for good this time. To ESF's commercial partners, this is a risk worth running if it means they can borrow some of the public goodwill towards restoring the chestnut and apply it to genetically engineered crops and trees in general.
If you're in NYS, call your representatives. If you have SUNY connections, get in touch with them. I'll let you know if I come across any other calls to action.
#environment #trees #Darling58 #Darling54 #forests #Chestnuts #AmericanChestnut #SUNY #UpstateNY #ecology
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I've been researching a cool (and timely) topic for this week's #SolarPunkSunday... #Chestnuts! So many uses! And #AmericanChestnut trees are making a comeback!
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The #AmericanChestnut sapling survived the winter!
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Hacking Trees to Bring Back the American Chestnut - “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” is playing on the radio now in the Northern H... - https://hackaday.com/2024/11/29/hacking-trees-to-bring-back-the-american-chestnut/ #americanchestnut #bioengineering #christmascarol #greenhacks #transgenic #arbology #chestnut #genomics #science #biology #biotech #botany #tree
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Hacking Trees to Bring Back the American Chestnut https://hackaday.com/2024/11/29/hacking-trees-to-bring-back-the-american-chestnut/ #AmericanChestnut #bioengineering #Christmascarol #greenhacks #transgenic #arbology #chestnut #genomics #Science #biology #biotech #botany #tree
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Genome study informs restoration of #AmericanChestnut tree https://phys.org/news/2024-07-genome-american-chestnut-tree.html
A genome-guided strategy for #climate resilience in American chestnut restoration populations https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2403505121
"We learned that the American #Chestnut Foundation has more work to do to conserve #trees from the southernmost American population, which is especially important to conserve because it is the most genetically diverse and it is likely to be the best adapted to the warmer climates of the future"
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I almost paid a donation to get these #chestnut seeds last year. Apparently, lucky I waited.
Today's #washingtonpost reports that #maine researchers at #umaine and #universityofnewengland noted mislabled genetically engineered #americanchestnut trees that contained an error not disclosed by #suny
Hopefully, this is a minor setback.
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A friend of mine gave me an #AmericanChestnut sapling. These trees are nearly extinct because of a fungus that nearly wiped them out. Usually they get sick and die after a few decades. I hope we can keep this one alive, and keep hope alive, so that this beautiful species can come back once again.
edit: gah, if course, it's a chestnut!
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a gift from my friend in town: an American Chestnut seedling.
American Chestnuts are endangered in the U.S. because of a chestnut blight introduced from East Asia. It is estimated that the blight killed between 3 and 4 billion American chestnut trees in the first half of the 20th century, beginning in 1904.
People are working on a genetically modified strain, but until that gets introduced, i'm happy to try to keep hope alive and grow this.
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A genetically modified American chestnut tree is being reviewed for deregulation! The public comment period is open until [now Jan 26 2023].
#trees #AmericanChestnut #gmo #genetics #forests #tiktok #ecology #restoration
#chestnut -
If you are interested in supporting the #AmericanChestnut reintroduction project that SUNY is bringing to fruition :sunglasses emoji: there's a form for public comment on deregulation for the blight resistant trees here :