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ESF’s American Chestnut Restoration Program Receives More than Half a Million Dollar USDA Grant
SYRACUSE, NY – Nov. 8, 2023 - The American Chestnut Restoration Project at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) received a $636,000 grant from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s (NIFA) Biotechnology Risk Assessment Grants (BRAG) program.
The grant will be used to monitor the dispersal, fitness, and deployment of the genetically engineered American chestnuts developed by ESF researchers. The BRAG program supports the development of new information that will assist federal regulatory agencies in making evidence-based decisions about the effects of genetically engineered organisms on the environment.
"The restoration of the American chestnut tree is not just a botanical endeavor; it's a testament to the power of research and innovation,” said ESF President Joanie Mahoney. “This generous USDA grant will help accelerate the restoration project toward completion and continues ESF’s commitment to resurrecting a once-iconic species and healing our environment.”
The funding will support specific assessments including monitoring growth, blight resistance, flowering development, and photosynthetic performance of Darling 58 chestnut trees as they start to mature in real-world conditions.
The BRAG funding will help ESF’s chestnut project transition from smaller controlled research plots to larger-scale, real-world restoration scenarios,” said Dr. Andrew Newhouse, director of the American Chestnut Project. “In particular, we will be studying how trees grow and interact with their environment as they mature, and looking at flowering and cross-pollination to better inform restoration plans.”
The BRAG team includes three ESF researchers with expertise in different aspects of chestnut restoration, two graduate students, and collaborators from other institutions.
With numerous safety assessments and environmental comparisons already completed (some under previous BRAG support), regulatory reviews mostly complete, and public distribution likely starting soon, the work now transitions from confined research plots to larger-scale plantings in preparation for range-wide reintroduction efforts.
Study results will be useful for restoration practitioners, forest land managers, individual chestnut enthusiasts, students of various ages, other university researchers, and federal biotechnology regulatory agencies as they prepare to evaluate other genetically engineered trees in the future.
American chestnuts were once among the most prominent hardwood trees in eastern United States forests. These long-lived trees were culturally, ecologically, and economically important. An invasive fungus (Cryphonectria parasitica), introduced from eastern Asia to the U.S. in the late 1800s, causes a disease called chestnut blight, which killed billions of American chestnut trees and effectively removed them from their entire native range by the 1950s.
ESF researchers produced a transgenic tree that effectively tolerates chestnut blight while retaining its full complement of American chestnut traits. The enhanced blight tolerance comes from a gene from wheat called oxalate oxidase (OxO), which degrades a toxin (oxalic acid) produced by the blight fungus. This means that the transgenic tree is not preventing or resisting blight infections, but rather tolerating them with less damage.
Darling 58 is currently undergoing federal regulatory review by the EPA, the USDA-APHIS, and the FDA.This is part of a process by which the safety of transgenic plants is verified before they are planted widely.
About SUNY ESF
The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) is dedicated to the study of the environment, developing renewable technologies, and building a sustainable and resilient future through design, policy, and management of the environment and natural resources. Members of the College community share a passion for protecting the health of the planet and a deep commitment to the rigorous application of science to improve the way humans interact with the world. The College offers academic programs ranging from the associate of applied science to the Doctor of Philosophy. ESF students live, study and do research on the main campus in Syracuse, N.Y., and on 25,000 acres of field stations in a variety of ecosystems across the state.