PowerPoint Presentation - The American Chestnut Foundation’s Breeding Program

Cultivation Method

•We use standard horticultural techniques adapted to screening chestnut trees for blight resistance. These are high input horticultural methods, not silvicultural methods.
•Our orchard spacings are designed to grow trees as fast as possible until they can survive being screened for blight resistance long enough to produce a crop.
•Trees with intermediate levels of blight resistance need to be 3-4 years old, about 2 to 3 inches in diameter at breast height, to survive inoculation.
•Trees with high levels of blight resistance can survive inoculation when they are only 1 or 2 years old, less than an inch caliper.
•This requires a lot of land and effort compared to breeding field crops, and more time, of course.