The American Chestnut Project
About

Our Darling American chestnuts are currently undergoing federal regulatory review by the USDA-APHIS, EPA, and FDA. Pending approval, we aim to distribute our trees for educational purposes, for small-scale restoration trials, and to the longest supporters of our project. It may be several years before our trees are widely available for planting outside of focused research efforts. If you wish to be added to our notification list so that you can receive updates on the regulatory status of our trees, email chestnut@esf.edu. Keep an eye out for updates!

In the meantime, we encourage you to plant wild-type (non-transgenic) American chestnuts. Although they are still susceptible to the blight, these are wonderful trees that provide many benefits and may eventually be used to cross-pollinate with blight-tolerant chestnuts.

There are a few ways that you can support American chestnut conservation and restoration. You can make a tax-deductible donation to ESF to support research and development by the chestnut project. You can also plant wild-type (non-transgenic) American chestnuts and participate in our tree breeding efforts as a citizen scientist. This Facebook group offers a chance to interact with other enthusiasts and follow updates from our team. Please visit our Join Us page for more information on how you can participate.

Yes! Numerous studies on a variety of organisms and environmental interactions confirm safety of Darling and other transgenic chestnuts with OxO. We are continuously studying interactions between our transgenic trees and the environment and potential impacts on ecosystem and human health. A series of articles summarizing various safety tests relevant to the regulatory process were published by The American Chestnut Foundation (read about Nutrition, Wildlife, Plants & Fungi). You can read more about our environmental interaction studies, including an informational poster outlining our findings.

No, Darling American chestnuts are not hybrids. Hybrid trees have a blended genome from two related species, such as American chestnut and Chinese chestnut. In contrast, Darling trees retain all of the American chestnut genes with the addition of one extra gene, OxO, that gives them blight tolerance. Hybrid chestnuts like those produced through The American Chestnut Foundation’s backcross breeding program are a cross between Chinese and American trees. Chestnut trees freely hybridize, and other hybrid varieties exist. Hybrid trees often have traits that are associated with the non-American parent. This can be useful in agricultural and horticultural contexts, and some traits may have adaptive benefits,  but primarily American chestnut traits are desirable for restoration purposes. Because the Darling trees display only American chestnut traits, they are appropriate highly suitable for reintroduction into our forests.

The following fact sheet by The American Chestnut Foundation has information on how to grow American chestnuts, including proper soil conditions and light levels.

Growing Chestnut Fact Sheet

A variety of chestnut species and hybrids are widespread throughout the eastern US, and positive identification can be difficult even for experts as traits can vary due to several factors. Relative to other chestnut species, American chestnuts (Castanea dentata) tend to have longer leaves with prominently hooked teeth, skinnier twigs, hairless leaves & twigs, smaller nuts, and a narrower and more upright tree form. Other North American chestnut relatives called chinquapins (C. pumila & C. ozarkensis) are distinguished by a single nut per bur, while most other chestnuts typically have three or more nuts per bur. American chestnuts are commonly confused with American beech, chestnut oak, and horse chestnut.

We also encourage you to submit observations of American chestnuts to the apps TreeSnap and iNaturalist, which are used by scientists and conservationists to aid in efforts to observe and conserve the American chestnut and other species.

The Darling American chestnut was named after Herb Darling, an original founder of the New York chapter of TACF. Herb, along with Stan and Arlene Wirsig, were the people who approached Dr. William Powell and Dr. Charles Maynard, the co-founders of our project, back in 1989 about taking a modern approach to develop a blight resistant American chestnut tree. Herb Darling was instrumental in starting our project. He and the New York Chapter provided our project with the original funding and supported us continually ever since. The name “Darling” is in honor of Herb's support in initiating the project and unwavering dedication to our shared goal of American chestnut restoration.

No, people with celiac disease, or other forms of gluten intolerance can eat nuts from Darling chestnuts with no problems. The OxO gene in Darling chestnuts is also found in many gluten-free grains and other foods (sorghum, rice, bananas, etc.) and is not related to gluten. This was carefully studied and described in regulatory documents; see Section 11.5 (p. 192) of our Petition to the USDA for more details.