Dustan chestnuts

This comes back to the dual use of the name Dunstan. It is the named variety with a specific genetic makeup. It is also a trade name that Chestnut Hill uses to market seedlings. No one can tell you what the specific makeup is of seedling sold under the Dunstan trade name because they don't control pollination.

If you are talking about the patent Dunstan variety, I do not believe they are mostly Chinese.

Thanks,

Jack
 
Can you really even buy the patent Dunstan variety - it would have to be a grafted tree, right?
 
Can you really even buy the patent Dunstan variety - it would have to be a grafted tree, right?

Not sure if you can buy them anymore or not. They would need to be grafted. I've not had much success trying to graft chestnuts. They seem to respond to injury by putting out new shoots rather than pushing a graft. I've even tried nut grafting chestnuts. It certainly is possible, but not easy. There may also be incompatibilities between varieties when grafting.

However, I believe anything in the chestnut genus can pollinate any other tree (except itself). The only thing that keeps chestnuts from crossing is distance. Since they are wind pollinated, two trees a hundred yards apart are functionally sexually isolated. It would not surprise me if some the nuts I first got from Dunstans were pollinated by Allegheny chinquapins. The first year I saw nuts on one tree, none of the other chestnuts anywhere near had catkins. Since I have native ACs growing not far away, I'm assuming they pollinated it that first year.

Thanks,

Jack
 
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Very much agreed,...even with the best data and best science they will not change. They have closed their mind in this area and their opinion is based on their feelings. But I bet they use google everyday and let google sell their usage data because they don't even understand that either.

I want to go but my son has an event in southern PA. I am just not sure I can make it. Can you take good notes for me and share?

Not sure if this could be it's own thread - I was there for the morning but had to leave at lunch time.

Some interesting stuff - this is just my interpretation of what was said.

Last year they submitted USDA application which was rejected. They are about to resubmit an expanded application that is like 350 pages with references within 'the next few days' and within 30 days they will know if it was accepted or needs to be expanded again. After that there is an open comment period of 60 days. That would be this winter if the app is accepted. Beyond that they think 2-5 years (also may have said 1.5 years) for approval (the same number that has been floating around for several years now) probably because that's how long it takes to get GMO crops typically approved. For USDA approval the baseline is whether it is more or less dangerous than traditional breeding programs.

They also have to submit (or have submitted, not sure) an app to the EPA. THe main question here is whether or not the oxalate oxidase is a pesticide. THey're confident it's not, but apparently some lawyers at the EPA don't agree. If so, they will need some kind of a '1 time exemption' for approval.

They are most optimistic about the FDA app which should take less than 1 year for approval. That will be submitted in the next few months supposedly. oxalate oxidase is in tons of food, so they think it should be simple to prove safe.

They were also very excited about a research paper that came out that shows something like 7% of plant species are naturally transgenic. It found transgenic genes in walnut.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31542868

Basically what they have been doing in the lab is also happening in nature.

They did reaffirm the tree will not be patented, but they are going trademark the tree for 'quality control.' So you can sell seeds or do whatever you want with the trees, but unless they are tested and proven to carry oxalate oxidase you can't call them the "suny esf tree' or whatever name they decide on. Seemed reasonable to me.

SUNY ESF has planted thousands of trees for seed/seedling production at this point. They have been planting the transgenic seeds in their fields.

(my opinion) They are going to have good diversity and a lot of seeds available if and when the tree is approved. I personally am not sure it is necessary to be planting 'mother trees' based on the scale of their work. They also have been establishing long term study sites, and educational forests.


This all just my interpretation of the morning meeting. In my opinion it is probably a little further off from getting approved than they think. I still think this the best or only hope for the american chestnut. They did say the national foundation was going to start helping out, but it is impressive what the NY foundation has done on their own. This year they raised 83k to support a full time worker that is building all of the orchards with the help of the school and students.
 
TY Skinner! You probably should start a new thread in order to not distract from OP. If not, then there you have it.... the most up to date excellent information. Excellent information. Eric says he believe they publish a summary of the NY meetings too. So we may be able to read about the afternoon information in that publication.

you are correct and just like I have shared earlier with my link from post #34 Gene transfer occurs OFTEN in nature & GMO chestnut, it seems SUNY has also discussed that genetic transfer does occur naturally in the wild.
 
Can you really even buy the patent Dunstan variety - it would have to be a grafted tree, right?
I posted a long time ago about the patented Dunstan varieties, there were maybe 4 of them and none of them were named Dunstan. Their grafted trees didn't have good long term success and Chestnut Hill switched to selling seedling trees under the Dunstan brand. I've said before there isn't anything magic about Dunstan brand chestnuts. The guy took several named large nut chinese varieties and one american chestnut and made some crosses. Then intercrossed another time or two and selected the most productive trees based on his goals for nut production. The end result was a line of large nut chinese chestnut. With the grafted varieties abandoned, they planted a bunch of their trees in orchards where they cross-pollinate and harvest the nuts and grow seedlings for sale. You get some variety within that range of chinese chestnut genetics. The trees should be fairly tolerant of chestnut blight and the form will be chinese, more spreading than tall so they would do best planted on about 40ft spacing in an orchard type setting. If you are buying expensive trees from Chestnut Hill, you want to plant on 40' spacing and wait. If you are growing your own or planting cheap chinese seedlings, you could plant on a tighter spacing and remove trees as the canopies grow together.

If you want to push zone boundaries, you don't want to buy many expensive Dunstan seedlings. I'd buy cheap bareroot chinese and let nature figure it out. Or if you like to grow your own, find a nearby source of nuts and grow those out. It would be a numbers game to find the hardiest.
 
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