The Goodness Thread

I'll take "Helping revive a great tree that was all but wiped out by foreign elements" as a good, as long as they destroy it to save it:


Billions of American chestnut trees once covered the eastern United States. They soared in height, producing so many nuts that sellers moved them by train car. Every Christmas, they’re called to mind by the holiday lyric “chestnuts roasting on an open fire.”

But by the 1950s, this venerable tree went functionally extinct, culled by a deadly airborne fungal blight and lethal root rot. A new study out Thursday in the journal Science provides hope for its revitalization, finding that the genetic testing of individual trees can reveal which are most likely to resist disease and grow tall, thus shortening how long it takes to plant the next, more robust, generation.

A smaller gap between generations means a faster path to lots of disease-resistant trees that will once again be able to compete for space in Eastern forests. The authors hope that can occur in the coming decades...

Scientists say genetic analysis could greatly speed restoration of iconic American chestnut
 
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