I’m pretty sure as of this year their hybrid program is only 80% American with very varied levels of blight resistance. Some come close to Chinese chestnut, and many can still live but they still have larger cankers and some are just barely more resistant than American. However the ozark chinquapin has successfully developed 100% native trees with blight resistance equal to or greater than Chinese chestnut in some of their breeding lines. That is a success story for sure. I’m holding out hope for the American chestnut but more work is definitely needed. I think if we know what we know now when the blight came through we might have already saved the species. I’d also like to mention that the Canadian chestnut council believes they have developed a non-hybrid pure American chestnut with resistance. They didn’t clear cut their chestnut trees in an attempt to stop the spread of the blight which likely helped maintain their genetic diversity and also their population was quite unique already, differing quite a bit from the New England and New York populations.
I’m pretty sure as of this year their hybrid program is only 80% American with very varied levels of blight resistance. Some come close to Chinese chestnut, and many can still live but they still have larger cankers and some are just barely more resistant than American. However the ozark chinquapin has successfully developed 100% native trees with blight resistance equal to or greater than Chinese chestnut in some of their breeding lines. That is a success story for sure. I’m holding out hope for the American chestnut but more work is definitely needed. I think if we know what we know now when the blight came through we might have already saved the species. I’d also like to mention that the Canadian chestnut council believes they have developed a non-hybrid pure American chestnut with resistance. They didn’t clear cut their chestnut trees in an attempt to stop the spread of the blight which likely helped maintain their genetic diversity and also their population was quite unique already, differing quite a bit from the New England and New York populations.