CONTACT: Bill MacDonald
304-293-8818

Freinkel to speak on “A Whole World Dying”
Explores near-death and gradual rebirth of the American chestnut

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Award-winning science writer Susan Freinkel will discuss the blight that brought the American chestnut to the brink of extinction next week at West Virginia University, home to scholars who have played key roles in the rescue and restoration of the tree.

Freinkel has covered subjects ranging from adoption to weight control, coyote hunts to mad cow disease to the development of a blue rose. She will present the seminar, “A Whole World Dying: The Early Fight to Save the American Chestnut” at 7 p.m. on Tuesday (Oct. 12) in 1001 Agricultural Sciences Building on WVU’s Evansdale Campus. Freinkel’s lecture is free and open to the public.

Frienkel will also be a guest at West Virginia’s third annual Chestnut Festival to be held in Rowlesburg, W.Va., on Sunday, Oct. 10.

While researching sudden oak death for Discover magazine, Freinkel learned about chestnut blight, what she calls “the granddaddy of forest epidemics,” and became caught up in the story. She spent nearly three years researching and writing “American Chestnut: The Life, Death and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree,” the first book on a blight that profoundly reshaped the American landscape.

She was invited to speak at WVU by Bill MacDonald, a professor of forest pathology in WVU’s Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design and one of the nation’s foremost scholars on the subject of chestnut blight.

MacDonald served on the board of the American Chestnut Foundation for nearly 20 years. He became involved with the organization while meeting with geneticists who were contemplating cross-breeding American chestnuts with blight-resistant Asian trees.

Once abundant, millions of American chestnut trees were killed by an invasive fungal pathogen beginning in the early 1900s. There is considerable national interest in the replenishment of the population.

In 2005, former President Jimmy Carter participated in the planting of an American chestnut at the Carter Center in Atlanta, home of an American chestnut tree demonstration site donated by the American Chestnut Foundation. The demonstration site features a backcross breeding program for strengthening the American chestnut against disease.

Geneticists began to breed American chestnuts with Chinese chestnuts, a type of chestnut that is blight resistant. Researchers now are repeatedly backcrossing the new hybrid with the American chestnut to create a tree that is 95 percent American yet contains the genes for resistance from Chinese chestnut. The goal is to produce a timber-type American chestnut that is resistant to chestnut blight.

According to MacDonald, producing a completely blight-resistant tree could happen 30 to 40 years in the future. The process is a slow one because seven years are required in the breeding cycle. MacDonald is currently doing research with diseases that kill the chestnut blight fungus and might provide biological control.

-WVU-

dw/10/08/10

Check http://wvutoday.wvu.edu daily for the latest news from the University
Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.