University of Missouri

Aug. 27, 2020

Ronald Revord

When Ronald Revord joined the University of Missouri last year, he arrived with lofty goals in mind: Establish a network to characterize genetic diversity and ancestry of chestnuts in the Midwest.

After spending his first three months at Mizzou working on and submitting a grant proposal to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Revord will get to realize his dream.

A nearly $1 million grant will allow Revord to work closely with chestnut growers to find the best performing and adapted seedling trees throughout respective areas in Missouri and the Midwest. It’s work that the Center for Agroforestry has already been participating in for more than a decade.

“This grant is very unique,” Revord said. “For chestnut growers, I think it’s been a long time coming. Some of these growers have been proposing some type of iteration of this work for more than a decade. This grant is a realization of that long-standing goal. It’s also a perfect partnership. We at MU offer an institutional home and systematic structure. However, we wouldn’t be able to evaluate this many mature plants across all of these different environments without the growers’ help. It’s just a perfect pairing.”

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