“At the turn of the [20th] century, …the American chestnut was devastated by blight… The blight swept through the Appalachian forest at a rate of 50 miles a year, leaving the species as nothing more than an early-succession-stage shrub. Now, the American chestnut is hard to come by.
To combat this issue, researchers have been trying to find a way to alter the genetics of the American chestnut in an attempt to make it resistant to blight. William Powell, director of the American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project at the University of New York in Syracuse, has been working for 35 years to restore the chestnut tree using genetic engineering.”
Read the full story at Appalachian History
