The land used to be full of them. The Chestnut grew straight, tall, and fast, making it a wonderful supply of lumber. It produced a large supply of nuts which were an important food source for woodland critters. It was, simply, a fantastic tree species.
Then the blight happened. A fungus arrived from abroad and began destroying the trees at a fantastic rate. Most of them were wiped out in a very short amount of time. The Chestnut has been endangered--and on the brink of extinction--ever since.
Until now.
In recent years, efforts have been made to restore the American Chestnut. Some of those efforts include cross-breeding it with the blight-resistant Chinese Chestnut. That solution isn't ideal, though, because the Chinese version is a different species and doesn't have the same characteristics. Other efforts have involved more direct genetic engineering to make a fully-American version that is blight-resistant.
Those latter efforts have succeeded. By inserting a gene from the wheat plant into the American Chestnut's DNA, researchers have developed a tree that is the old-fashioned American Chestnut in every way but is now also blight-resistant. Check out the video from the project:
https://ensemble.syr.edu/hapi/v1/contents/permalinks/a9A7BmLz/view
I'd love to see the day when Americans once again roast Chestnuts over on open fire, just like the song says, as if the blight had never happened at all.
Bring back the Chestnut! :D
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