During my birth year of 1998, research was still being conducted in applied plant ecology, one of those researches of interest would be on the chestnut blight affecting the once dominant American Chestnut tree that was commonly found throughout North America. I settled on this particular research paper due to a personal interest in the history of the American chestnut tree and its high resistance to natural decay
The research conducted applies to the topic of loss of biodiversity whereby the American Chestnut tree was once dominant in the Carolinian zone in Canada with insects that have relied on it, but due to the Chestnut blight it has become functionally extinct thus we have lost the biodiversity associated with insects that relied on the American Chestnut tree. The research also applies rare plant conservation and managing non-indigenous plants and invasive plants as the American Chestnut tree can be categorized as a rare plant that needs to be conserved due to its critically low numbers and inability to form offspring due to the Chestnut Blight as the chestnut blight itself was introduced by the import of trees from Asia.
The main research questions and the results were to look at how effective the two breeding methods used to form American Chestnut trees that were resistant to Chestnut Blight, which the results found that the hybridization method by cross breeding an Asian Chestnut tree and an American Chestnut tree was not very successful and the back-crossing method indicated certain genes that provided resistance to Chestnut blight which was determined to be promising in aiding the formation of a Chestnut Blight resistant American Chestnut tree.
Link to the research as follows https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/jrnl/1998/1998_exotic-pests-papers/schlarbaum_1998-exoticpests.pdf
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 