In 1990, the New York Chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation and State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science & Forestry (ESF) began working collaboratively on a complementary approach to traditional breeding by transgenically adding new genes to the American chestnut to enhance the tree’s ability to withstand blight. ESF's American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project is conducting basic and applied research which has led to the development of a blight-tolerant American chestnut tree known as 'Darling 58.' The long-term goal is to reintroduce a population of these resistant trees back into the forest ecosystems of New York and, eventually, the rest of the eastern U.S.