Background CHESTNUT STATISTICAL PROJECT

T REE B ACKGROUND  The American Chestnut Tree was once one of America’s most prominent, large, and useful trees  The American Chestnut Tree grew 80 feet tall or higher and often several feet in diameter  It’s strong, rot resistant wood was used for tasks such as building homes, fences, and other types of furniture  It was also an integral part of the forest ecosystem; used by animals as shelter and food (especially the hardy chestnuts)

B LIGHT H APPENS  In 1904 the chestnut blight was brought over with travelers and their local plants  The blight spread throughout the Appalachian woods and killed nearly 4 billion American Chestnut trees, killing wildlife and reducing the American Chestnut trees to fallen logs and giant stumps  Newly grown trees contract the blight at an almost 100% rate, limiting their growth and nourishment  To the right is a picture of the blight in a Petri dish

R ESEARCH  Organizations like the American Chestnut Foundation are performing extensive research in an attempt to restore the American Chestnut to it’s former prominence  Through a genetic process called backcrossing, they are attempting to develop an American Chestnut that not only closely resembles the original, but that is also blight resistant

O UR M INI P ROJECT GGoal: To find a correlation between canker size and disease susceptibility rating CCanker Size Measured by length and width of canker on 2 different parts of the tree RRating Given by a researcher with 1 being highly resistant to the blight and 5 being highly susceptible to the blight This tree would have received a rating of 4.5 or 5 due to canker size This tree would have received a rating of around a 2.5 due to the relatively small size of it’s 2 cankers This tree is being inoculated with the blight