Actually, it is surprisingly relevant. The American chestnut is functionally extinct except for human intervention. In its range it was surprisingly prolific before the blight. Estimates are that it supplied 90% of the wildlife food and it was the dominant overstory tree in the eastern mountains. After the blight, it does not flower, fruit, and evolve without human intervention. Infections kill the tree down to the soil line but soil fungi kill the blight fungus so the roots don't die and it re-sprouts from the root collar. But it is unable to flower and fruit in the understory so it can't evolve to adapt to the blight. We collect seed for our breeding program by clear-cutting a mountainous area so the chestnut sprouts can receive a few years of sunlight, enabling them to fruit. This seed is used for the hybridizing program using asian chestnuts for resistance genes and for the genetic engineering program by using the same gene - oxalic acid oxidase (OXO) that rust resistant wheat uses to fight wheat rust. Admittedly, the world would continue to spin but diversity suffers. Incidentally, I don't especially like the taste of chestnuts. It just seemed a shame not to do something when we could. On Mon, Oct 3, 2022 at 2:27 PM Aad van Beek <avbeek1@hotmail.com> wrote: > *Tim wrote: > *When I joined The American Chestnut Foundation, whose original intent was > to breed a blight resistant forest adapted 'American' chestnut by > introducing the blight resistance of the asian chestnuts, I found myself > exposed to many conflicting opinions. I thought it especially interesting > that some of the same progressive thinkers who believed in integration of > the entire human 'race' (species) were absolute racists when it came to > hybridizing the American chestnut. And although I had always gardened > organically before, I thought that genetic engineering involving insertion > of genes like Bt which would negate the necessity of pesticides would be a > godsend, I was amazed that the 'organic community' seemed to think it was > the devil's work. And, I am truly amazed that some people consider > insertion of the OXO gene in the American chestnut some sort of tragic > hubris subject to karmic retribution. > > No clue what it has to do with "Wild collecting". But in greater scheme of > things. Dinosaurs got extinct but the world is still spinning. Guess if we > don't hybridize the American chestnut with Asian Chestnut or insert some > genes it could get extinct from blight. But that would not stop the world > from spinning either. > > Aad > _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://…