Virginia Tech researchers explore genome of American chestnut tree with hopes for restoration

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — Virginia Tech researchers have collaborated with the American Chestnut Foundation to examine the genome of American chestnut trees, which may help restoration of the tree’s population.

According to a university spokesperson, fungal blight decimated the tree’s population in the early 20th century, killing billions of trees and changing the life cycle of the species, which is native to the Appalachian mountains.

“Because of chronic fungal blight infections, the species is unable to reproduce, migrate, or evolve in response to climate change. The American Chestnut Foundation has spent the last 40 years creating a genetically modified, blight-resistant species, but adaptive diversity has not been a focus until now,” the university said.

The research may potentially help to restore the American chestnut population and adjust breeding to the changing climate.

The team found that the trees had a lot of genetic adaptation to different environments.

“Using deep learning software, researchers were able to predict the geographic origins of a particular genome sequence by training this model using trees with known origins. Results showed the foundation was doing a good job producing trees with adaptive diversity, although attention must be paid to not losing this diversity through further breeding for blight resistance,” the spokesperson explained.

This information, when combined with guidance for collecting and conserving more of the diversity from the regions established by the study, can help the foundation restore specific blight resistant tree families according to regions where their genome is best matched.

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