The Ozark Chinquapin, an endangered species due to the chestnut blight that almost completely wiped them out during the 1930, 40, and 50's. There are a few remaining remnants, some that show some resistance to the blight. There is an ongoing effort to bring them back by selective breeding. There are two different approaches, one is just selecting pure chinquapin strains and cross breeding with other pure strains in hopes of obtaining a pure strain that is completely resistant to the blight. The other method is genetically crossing the Ozark Chinquapin with other species of chestnut and back crossing several generations to obtain an almost pure Ozark Chinquapin but retaining the gene that resists the blight.
I have been working on this project for the last 5 years and believe have some promising results. Mine is a combination of the two methods. I uise Chinese chestnut as a rootstock and graft the Ozark Chinquapin to it. I am also growing seedlings produced from this seed. So far no blight but some seedlings do not have the vigor I am looking for. Updates will be posted on this site as they occur.
