What's New
Researchers Develop New Cloning Techniques to Repopulate American Elms
June 17, 2010
Researchers in OAC's department of Plant Agriculture plan to repopulate American elms by developing new techniques for cloning and producing trees resistant to its biggest killer - Dutch elm disease. The popular trees, which at one time lined boulevards and decorated city centres, were almost wiped out in Ontario in the 1970s by a fungal infection that prevents nutrient transport in the tree.
Profs. Praveen Saxena and Alan Sullivan aim to bring back the American elm population through micropropagation, based on selecting tissue samples from surviving disease-resistant trees. The samples are taken from the trees’ growing points in roots or stems to grow mass numbers of new plantlets that are genetic clones. Duplicating disease-resistant elms is no easy task, as only one of about every 100,000 elm trees has natural resistance, said Saxena.
