Can GMOs Save the Wild American Chestnut Tree?

As we conclude the Thanksgiving holiday and head into the season of Christmas, it’s important to remind folks of the American chestnut tree blight.  In the early 1900s, the eastern United States chestnut tree population was hit with a pathogenic fungus called Cryphonectria parasitica. This fungus is the main cause of chestnut blight, a disease that wiped out 3 to 4 billion trees in just a couple of decades and nearly devastated the entire chestnut tree population. The chestnut blight was first spotted in 1904 and is believed to have arrived here in Asian chestnut trees. Unfortunately, American chestnuts have no resistance to the fungus, making it all too susceptible to the disease and now it’s an endemic throughout the Eastern U.S.  Scientists in Syracuse are working on creating the first genetically modified wild forest tree. And with that, rest hopes that the American chestnut tree could make a comeback with nudge from the lab.