MA/RI-TACF 2025 Annual Meeting

All are welcome to the

26th Annual Meeting of the
MA/RI Chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation

Sunday, December 7, 2025
11am-3pm (hybrid) 

Chapter elections (10am) will precede the Public Annual Meeting

AGENDA

11:00 Welcome & introductions:Yvonne & Deni

11:10 MA/RI & CT Chapter Pollination 2025 Highlights – Roundtable

11:25 URI Fellowship Lightning Talk –  Haylee Balme
Restoring the American Chestnut Tree in Rhode Island: Developing Blight-Resistant Hybrids for Forest Resilience

11:30 Deni Ranguelova
RGS plantings: requirements 
Intro to Volunteer Local software

12:00  Chestnut Potluck Luncheon

1:00 Tour of CAES facilities & trees

1:15 Nut grafting: David Marinelli   

1:30 Keynote:  Lake Graboski

The Nuts and Bolts of Chestnut Breeding 
Growing and evaluating chestnuts for the breeding program, including seedling production, grafting, and small stem assays, and explore how these advance the mission of restoring the American chestnut.

2:15 Deni Ranguelova

Current orchards:  updating status of each; determining knowledge gaps are (some are missing a lot of info); what we can do moving forward

Announcements:
– dentatabase trainings this winter
– genotyping trees in the spring
– intern posting coming up
– scheduling site visits

3:00pm Meeting concludes

Zoom Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2818213656?omn=85043766636
Passcode 1904