ORTV Tours Woodbridge Orchard

By Bill Adamsen

Stephanie Valickis of The Office of Radio and Television (ORTV) recorded a segment featuring interviews with TACF Director and Chapter President Bill Adamsen, and CT-TACF Chapter Director/Secretary Dr. Phil Arnold. ORTV's mission is bringing good news to life by producing values oriented programs of professional quality to listeners and viewers throughout Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York. It is an agency of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut – and its programs are broadcast on cable channels throughout the region.

[click for larger photo]

Phil Arnold Interviewed by Stephanie Valicki

[click for larger photo]
Dr. Arnold interviewed by Stephanie Valickis
of ORTV while cameraman Sara adjusts focus

Stephanie had been following our story for the better part of a year, and had approached me several weeks ago about doing a segment featuring interviews and an orchard visit. Our Woodbridge Orchard (a partnership with the Woodbridge Land Trust) is conveniently located in Woodbridge Center within easy driving distance of the ORTV offices in Prospect, and Dr. Phil Arnold was available to provide access to the orchard. Plans were finalized – dependent on weather – since ORTV wanted some outside orchard video.

Dr. Arnold lives in the house that his family has called home for several generations. Much of the wood in the house was American chestnut. This provided the camera crew the opportunity to film the flooring and doors to give an example of appearance of the wood. Dr. Arnold explained that builders love demolitions that involve chestnut since the wood can be recycled and reused time and time again. It's strong, light and rot resistant – a builder and recycler's dream. Dr. Arnold also showed us his planting log – memo to file – this would make excellent blog entries!

Planted by Dr. Arnold's father, a large Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollisima) has left several open pollination progeny in the area who themselves are now mostly grown up. As is so common, Dr. Arnold's Chinese chestnuts show no signs of succesptibility to the blight. Several weeks away from dropping their fruit, the chestnuts provided a great visual display of the well protected fruit burrs so familiar to anyone knowledgeable about the chestnut. It appears Dr. Arnold is nursing a finger that may have clutched this bur a bit too firmly. We talked about the morphology of the tree and how we know whether a tree is of Asian or other ancestry. Most Asian, European, and the American chestnut have multiple nuts in each bur. Chinquapin and Castanea henryi have but one nut per bur.

Dr. Arnold shows off burs from his Chinese chestnut

[click for larger photo]
Dr. Arnold discusses the chestnut bur from the
Chinese chestnut planted by his late father

Comparing leaf of Chinese chestnut with the BC3 American back-cross chestnut in the orchard

[click for larger photo]
Comparison of the Chinese chestnut leaf (top)
with that of the 15/16ths back-crossed American chestnut below

We ventured from Dr. Arnold's house a short walk to the orchard located just across the street. This gave an opportunity to compare the morphology of the Chinese chestnut leaf Stephanie had carried over from the house. Some of the striking differences include: leaf color, reflectivity (glossiness), stem color and leaf shape. This provided a great opportunity to discuss tree identification and some of the techniques used for morphological keying such as the twenty-one point index of species identify used for determining recovery of character as well as simply differentiating European, Asian or hybrids from American chestnut.

We have also been offered an opportunity to use genetic testing to help determine how our native trees fit into the proposed migration model for American chestnut.

The Woodbridge Orchard was one of our first CT-TACF backcross orchards planted back in 2006 (see page 4). The orchard contains three lines of back-cross trees – Burlington, Manchester, Calistro – and a wide selection of controls. The lines represent native Connecticut trees found by members and others, that were then validated as American chestnut by scientists at TACF and the CT Agricultural Experiment Station. These trees were then successfully pollinated with advanced breeding pollen from The American Chestnut Foundation research facilities, and their nuts planted in Woodbridge to test for blight resistance. Trees that prove resistant, and with the correct morphological characteristics, will be used in our future breeding efforts. Approximately half their genes are of CT origin, and we hope that means they'll be best suited for growing in CT and helping reforest CT's forests with American chestnut.

The tree with which Dr. Arnold poses was planted in 2006 and was derived from a pollination of the Calistro tree in Woodbridge. With up to fourteen feet of growth in just four seasons, it is easy to see why researchers think the American chestnut may hold great promise for carbon sequestration. This tree, should it survive, will likely bear nuts next season.

CT Chapter Orchard Calistro tree - four years old and fourteen feet tall

[click for larger photo]
Dr. Arnold stands next to one of the Calistro
back-crossed trees planted in 2006. These seedlings grew from nuts to reach upwards of
fourteen feet in just four years of growth

[click for larger photo]
One of the BC3F3 advanced breeding trees
distributed by The American Chestnut Foundation
earlier this year. This tree is expected to have
high resistance to blight, and at 15/16ths American
chestnut, to exhibit the characteristics we expect
of the American chestnut tree

We mentioned that in addition to the three lines of back-cross trees there were numerous control trees of first generation (F1), open pollinated potentially pure American chestnut, and various known crosses (see inventory sheet – page 4). These are planted to assist with the comparisons following inoculation with blight. In order to determine those of the back-cross with best blight resistance, we will inoculate the trees in this orchard with an inoculum of virulent blight, and then compare the size of the lesions. Those deemed most resistant will be retained for further breeding.

This past year The American Chestnut Foundation distributed a small quantity of one of their lines of final product (BC3F3) to individuals with the longest terms of membership. Several of those members donated their trees to the Chapter, and Dr. Arnold graciously accepted responsibility for those trees. The tree to left is an example of one of those trees – all of which survived in this setting. This is the same type of product we hope to achieve with our CT program in future years as we breed the back-cross trees in orchards such as the orchard in Woodbridge. We can then have fully resistant trees that breed true for resistance, and have a significant makeup of CT genes.

We recorded a few more minutes of video at the orchard site and the crew took some static shots without sound. The wind had picked up some and was creating challenges for the sound crew. Stephanie Valickis recorded her summary of the experience and we wrapped up and left. We suggested that Stephanie visit the CT Agricultural Experiment Station and get a tour by Dr. Sandy Anagnostakis. No story on chestnut in CT would be complete without understanding the role CAES performed, and continues to, in attempts to restore the American chestnut to the forests of CT.