Breeding projects are underway to combine the nut quality and timber. Overall, it is important to understand how blight works to further help protect the trees against it. Blight is a Castanea Disease which has eliminated American Chestnut Trees from landscape. This disease causes cankers on the branches then moves into the trunk and thus kills the tree. Currently, there is no chemical control for this disease.
Pycnidia are tiny, orange spore-cases that characterize spreading chestnut blight.
This disease has killed 4 billion chestnuts. The fungus that causes chestnut blight invades a tree through different types of wounds. These wounds include beetle borings, claw marks, and broken branches. The fungus then multiplies beneath the bark to form a mat-like web which eventually develops into a killing canker. Defense by the tree is done by ringing the lesion with new bark tissue.