The Georgia Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation

3 days ago

Dear Georgia Chestnut enthusiasts,

As many of you are aware, we have been expecting a favorable announcement from the federal regulatory agencies this summer regarding deregulation the Darling 58 (D58) transgenic chestnut research. Unfortunately, it looks like the federal approval is not happening as quickly as we had hoped. The D58 research, being conducted primarily at State University of New York (SUNY ESF), involves inserting a gene from wheat into chestnuts, resulting in a chestnut with the heritable ability to survive blight infection. This effort is in addition to our ongoing backcross breeding program which seeks to develop blight-resistant chestnuts by crossing American and Chinese species.

Last week, TACF National provided a comprehensive update on D58 research and deregulation during their monthly Chestnut Chat series. A recording of the podcast is now available on YouTube. The event runs about 90 minutes, and provides an outstanding update on all the issues regarding D58. Here's the link to the recording: tacf.org/chestnut-chat-archives/#darling-58-update-sept-15-2023

TACF has also released a web page with additional D58 updates: tacf.org/darling-58/

For those who are pressed for time, I've briefly summarized the information from the chat below:

1) The D58 federal deregulation process is ongoing. We've made good progress, and we now have most of what we need for USDA APHIS and FDA, but the EPA piece has been delayed further. We continue to expect eventual deregulation (in some form), perhaps in the next 3 years. In the near term, we will continue ongoing research on D58 and other transgenics. We don't have a firm date for when the EPA guidance will be released. We believe that the delays are not caused by concerns about safety, etc.

2) Hopes that D58 was going be a "silver bullet" were probably never realistic. Recent communications may have unintentionally overstated the importance of D58 to the overall restoration efforts, and we will work to be more realistic in the future. Other transgenic trees are in development, such as the DarWin tree. These may turn out to be more important than D58 and some of this work in on-going in Georgia (UGA).

3) Individual (public) access to D58 pollen, seeds or trees is not expected anytime soon.

4) We continue to work with both transgenic and traditional backcross approaches and expect that both will be important going forward.

5) There is a lot of important science yet to be done. Results from nursery and orchard experimentation are necessary, but we also need to continue and expand research to see how these trees do in actual forest environments. This will take many years. As TACF's Vasiliy Lakoba at Meadowview Research Farms puts it, "science can accelerate, but trees work on tree time."

6) Work to develop trees with Prr (black root rot) resistance also continues.

7) Almost every decision we make in this process is informed by the need to capture genetic diversity,

8) We need to maintain our enthusiasm for the process, despite things taking longer than we had hoped.

Thanks, Jack Rogers, Georgia Chapter President

The American Chestnut Foundation

P.S. Look forward to future announcements about outreach events in the Atlanta and surrounding areas this fall. These will be fun opportunities to learn and to have questions answered. ... See MoreSee Less

Darling 58 | The American Chestnut Foundation

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Darling 58 Rescue and Restoration of the American Chestnut The American chestnut was an ecologically, economically, and culturally significant tree species in the Eastern United States. In the late 18...