Purdue University has an excellent agricultural school, probably about the most innovative such in the world. One of their major areas of concern in tat field are major tree pests including Dutch Elm, EAB, and of course the Chestnut blight. They have been scrambling to try to find a way to stop the EAB.

As for the blight, here is what I have heard. Purdue has an excellent bio engineering facility, the genesis of most of our bio-engineered crops and plants we have to day. They have the technology to alter the genes of a plant. They have been applying this technology to the Chestnut. Essentially this is the same thing as selective and cross breeding at a highly accelerated scale. They don't have to wait for the tree to reach seed bearing stage to pass on its genes.

I have heard that at the latest they have developed a hybrid that is over 90% American Chestnut, and is resistant to the blight in initial testing. It will be several years before these results can be definitively confirmed and even longer before the resultant tree can be put into the forest. With a tree like this, there are a number of measures that have to be taken to ensure it would survive in the wild, or to ensure it does not become an invasive species.

I hope you find this news encouraging. I know some folks in Bio-engineering school at Purdue, I will try and see if they know anything about the current status of this project. I heard it from my brother, who heard it from the school while he was studying at Purdue.

It was Purdue, by the way, that introduced the Asian Beetle (the orange lady bugs). They got rid of the aphids, but now we have all these beetles (I would rather have the beetles than the aphids they eat). That just shows you how you have to be carfeul with these things...