Christmas trees are in trouble. Help is on the way.

What traits do elite Christmas trees have?

What threats cause Christmas tree mortality?

What is the short-term solution for root rot?

BLACK FRIDAY

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Steve Ottman was born to sell Christmas trees.

Ottman, 73, said his family has been growing the holiday staple in Wisconsin since the Great Depression. But now his 50-acre Christmas tree farm just outside of Belleville is in trouble.

Drought struck parts of the state earlier in 2025, killing nearly half of his young trees. "We're not big enough that we can afford to irrigate, so we rely on the good Lord to water our trees for us," Ottman said.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, he'll still be able to harvest and sell his older trees, but in the coming years, "we'll definitely be short," Ottman said.

Christmas tree farmers like Ottman around the country are dealing with drought, disease and damage from severe weather events – threats that are being exacerbated by climate change. But help is on the way: Researchers in North Carolina are working to produce genetically-superior Christmas trees that will not only withstand pests and disease, but also grow faster, be perfectly shaped and drop fewer needles around your house.

"There's always room for improvement," said Justin Whitehill, director of the Christmas Tree Genetics Program at North Carolina State University.

Christmas trees face 'perfect storm of mass mortality'

Drought was also an issue this year for Christmas tree growers in Michigan, one of the nation's top Christmas tree-producing states, according to Bill Lindberg, an educator in Michigan State University Extension who works with farmers statewide.

Lindberg said his colleagues are working to develop strategies farmers can use when planting young trees, like mulching and irrigation, to protect them from the erratic precipitation patterns they expect to see more of in the future.

Researchers in Michigan, which will provide the White House Christmas tree in 2025, were also recently awarded a grant to study armillaria and phytophthora root rot, which Lindberg said are "significant challenges that growers have faced and will continue to face."

Growers in North Carolina, another leading Christmas tree producing state, have also been fighting phytophthora root rot, a fungus that eats away at a tree's root system, according to Whitehill. He said increasingly shorter, warmer winters and worsening extreme weather events like Hurricane Helene are putting stress on the state's Fraser firs, making them even more susceptible to pests and disease.

"We're seeing more and more drought and more harsh conditions and having the roots degraded of our trees by this pathogen is sort of creating a perfect storm of mass mortality events across the US for some Christmas tree species," said Whitehill.

Whitehill said that while many Christmas tree growers were personally affected by Helene, the impact on the crop overall was "really minimal" because the trees grow at such high elevations they're protected from floodwaters. The storm unleashed devastating floods that washed away homes and killed at least 250 people across the region.

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The Cartner family farm, which provided the White House Christmas tree in 2024, lost about 7,000 trees in the storm, a fraction of their total stock. Jerry Moody, the extension director for North Carolina's Avery County, previously told USA TODAY five farmers in the area that lost a collective $30 million in crops.

Landslides and other storm-related events caused approximately $125 million in losses of ornamental nurseries and Christmas trees, including the money and time spent growing those trees, according to a report from the National Centers for Environmental Information.

Perfecting the 'Cadillac of Christmas trees'

To combat these threats, Whitehill and his team are working to create the perfect Fraser fir, a variety already known as the "Cadillac of Christmas trees." Over the course of more than four decades, researchers have been selectively breeding the best of these firs to produce "elite" offspring, according to Whitehill, director of the Christmas Tree Genetics Program.

The team harvested cones from their elite seed orchard for the first time in 2025 and hope to distribute 500 pounds of seeds in the spring, Whitehill said. Though the genetically improved trees will grow faster than their standard counterparts, he said it'll still take about a decade before they make it to consumers' living rooms.

Unlike traditional Christmas trees which must be pruned to have the perfect silhouette, the elite trees will naturally have the conical shape customers expect, which will help growers reduce labor costs, according to Whitehill. And while some species of trees drop between 15% and 30% of their needles over the course of the holiday season, the elite trees are expected to shed less than 2% of their needles.

Whitehill said researchers are also using more advanced techniques and gene-editing technology to create trees that are resistant to pests and disease, a problem that can't be addressed through traditional breeding. 

In order to fight phytophthora root rot, for example, researchers are "grafting" Fraser firs with an Asian fir species that has natural immunity, Whitehill said. He said the process essentially involves gluing the tops of Fraser firs to the root system of the resistant species.

"We hope that's going to be sort of a short term solution," Whitehill said. "The long term solution to this problem we've identified is we're working to identify the genes from that resistant Asian fir species and we're trying to move those genes from the Asian species into Fraser fir."

Making Christmas trees more resilient is especially important in the face of long-term changes to the environment. Though the North Carolina mountains are still "the perfect spot" for growing Fraser fir, Whitehill said changes in the amount of precipitation have already caused growers in the southern part of the state to close up shop over the years.

"It is a concern if we are unable to develop some of these solutions in the near future, in the next I would say 20 years, that it's possible there could be some shifts in Fraser fir production," he said.

Creating the perfect Christmas tree will inevitably be good for business in an industry that netted $533 million in sales in 2022, according to the most recent figures available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But back in Wisconsin, Ottman said the best part of keeping the tradition alive is bringing joy to the customers. Ottman, who has balanced pruning and planting with a career as a police officer for thirty years, hopes his children will take over for him one day.