¥The
old USDA breeding program determined that Chinese
chestnut had the most blight resistance of all the chestnut species.
In American forests, the Chinese chestnut
itself cannot reach the overstory when competing
with other tree species. We were
able to jumpstart our program by using two
first backcrosses from the USDA &
Connecticut programs.
¥The
low levels of blight resistance in some of the large, surviving American chestnut trees might also be useful in a breeding program, which we are exploring.
¥We
also use Japanese chestnut as a source of resistance.