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On Friday, July 17, in Cape Elizabeth, University of New England Professor of Environmental Studies Thomas Klak began to pollinate one of the state’s few surviving American chestnut trees with a blight-tolerant pollen speed-bred by Klak and his students. The pollen contains an extra gene from wheat, allowing it to resist the fungal blight that killed 3 billion chestnut trees from Maine to Alabama. This was the first time this has been done in Maine. Courtesy photo

On Friday, July 17, in Cape Elizabeth, University of New England Professor of Environmental Studies Thomas Klak began to pollinate one of the state’s few surviving American chestnut trees with a blight-tolerant pollen speed-bred by Klak and his students. The pollen contains an extra gene from wheat, allowing it to resist the fungal blight that killed 3 billion chestnut trees from Maine to Alabama. This was the first time this has been done in Maine.

Klak holds a vial of the blight-resistant pollen. Courtesy photo

 

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