American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation
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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. 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 recombinations will eventually result in highly-resistant specimens that can be used to re-establish the species.
