The Maryland Chapter is trying to save our Beltsville orchard. The USDA has announced its desire to shut down or repurpose the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC), putting TACF’s important chestnut orchard at risk. One of the major challenges to American chestnut restoration is Phytophthora root rot, or PRR, a soil-borne disease that is especially damaging in the southern and mid-Atlantic portions of the native range.
This orchard is valuable because the trees are growing in soil naturally affected by PRR. In other words, they are being tested under real-world disease pressure.
The orchard includes chestnut hybrids with predominantly American chestnut ancestry that have shown PRR resistance. Some of these trees may begin flowering in the next few years and could become an important source of disease-resistant seed for restoration work. Because BARC may be decommissioned or repurposed, TACF could lose access to this orchard. It would be a major loss to lose access to these trees.
We are asking members and volunteers to contact their members of Congress and ask them to support continued access to the BARC chestnut orchard and preservation of this important living research and restoration resource.
Here’s an Instagram video link discussing the problem.
