The application of genetic engineering to food crops is controversial, and rightly so. Critics worry that changing genetics may have harmful, unanticipated effects on food safety and the environment.

CRESSONA — Seeds lying deep inside a sleepy hillside orchard could play a crucial role in the regeneration of the embattled American chestnut tree. Early Friday morning, a team of volunteers dropped ...

Scientists like to say that their work usually proceeds two steps forward and one step back. But sometimes that’s optimistic. Case in point: A scientific effort I’ve been writing about since 2010, the ...

There’s an old holiday tradition in the U.S. that's become increasingly harder to celebrate: fire-roasted chestnuts. Thanks to an endemic fungus, about 4 billion American chestnut trees were killed ...

Sara Fitzsimmons fights to resurrect a tree that once ruled the eastern U.S. forests. Billions of American chestnut trees once shaped life in Appalachia, but a foreign fungus erased them in a matter ...

Sunlight filtered through the overstory of a thick Pennsylvania forest and a few rays fell upon the long, serrated leaves of the American chestnut trees down below. The higher Mike Manes, 78, hiked, ...