The American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to re-establishing the American chestnut, Castanea dentata, as a viable species using only pure American chestnut genetic stock. They differ from the American Chestnut Foundation, which is seeking to re-establish the species using hybrid stock.
The Cooperators Foundation is based at Virginia Tech. They have several breeding nurseries, where chestnuts which express known blight resistance are cross-pollinated to produce seeds. These breeding trees have been grown from cuttings from forest trees that survived into the 1960s and beyond. The seeds are then propagated at the Clements State Tree Nursery in West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

. The seedlings are distributed to growers who plant them in field trials. To date, well over one hundred thousand seedlings have been planted. The hope is that the random genetic recombination

Genetic recombination

Genetic recombination is a process by which a molecule of nucleic acid is broken and then joined to a different one. Recombination can occur between similar molecules of DNA, as in homologous recombination, or dissimilar molecules, as in non-homologous end joining. Recombination is a common method...

s will eventually result in highly-resistant specimens that can be used to re-establish the species.

External links

• American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation