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Congratulations to our summer graduates! Many of them are now ready to enter the agricultural workforce and have accepted positions. Others are choosing to continue their education – searching for a role that fits their passion. We are thrilled to hear that there are so many opportunities for our graduates. We congratulate all and wish them the best of luck. Classes begin on Aug. 21 for the next semester, and last-minute preparations are being made for another wonderful year.
Record heat continues to impact much of Texas, leading to major water restrictions and loss of crop production including hay and pastures. This has negatively impacted some of our research, but also provided an opportunity to evaluate strategies to improve performance under stressful conditions.
We are excited to have new faculty joining our program. We have recently filled four positions and are interviewing/negotiating to fill four others. We recently hired Kate Szerlag, Ph.D., as our new faculty member in soil and water chemistry. She will be joined soon by Brandon Gerrish, Ph.D., as our state small grain and oilseed specialist. Ying Wang, Ph.D., will start work on the soil microbiome on Jan. 1 and Joseph Burke, Ph.D., is moving into the "old timer" role with a few months under his belt in cropping systems work at Lubbock. Thanks to Julie Howe, Ph.D., for assuming the role of associate department head for undergraduate programs. The Academic Program Review process agreed that this would be good to renew focus on our undergraduate program and with the move of Steve Hague, Ph.D., to Auburn University. Wayne Smith, Ph.D., will be focusing a bit more on cotton breeding while continuing the graduate training program.
We have completed mid-term reviews and they have been submitted to the appropriate directors/deans and will soon begin to review for the promotion process. Thanks to Amir Ibrahim, Ph.D., for his role as promotion and tenure chair. On Sept. 1, we will celebrate the promotion of Russ Jessup, Ph.D., to professor, and Peyton Smith, Ph.D., Endang Septiningsih, Ph.D., and Reagan Noland, Ph.D., to associate professor.
Summer is a busy time for our science, and a time for our faculty to display their accomplishments at field days. The Beef Cattle Short Course, National Association of Plant Breeders, Texas Turfgrass Association, Soils Critique, Texas Cotton Producers, Small Grains Workers and Small Grains Advisory Committee, and International Grasslands Congress all engaged our faculty. Thanks to our faculty who led the organization of many of these events and provided presentations as well this year. While much summer research is now behind us or wrapping up soon, plans for the fall are evolving rapidly. Many fall events are coming up including: The World Food Prize, Cotton Breeders Conference, and the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America annual meetings. The Bennett Trust Women’s Conference and Turfgrass Field Day events are planned for the near future.
We also want to give thanks to our Faculty Advisory Committee for all the work they did to wrap up our APR process. We are now to the fun part of moving forward with the new ideas, protocols etc. We will soon be reconstituting the FAC and are excited to move forward with the vision provided by the APR. We expect the final comments from the Provost and Academic Affairs in the near future.
Congratulations to our recent award recipients from ASA-CSSA-SSSA! A big congratulations to all our faculty for helping make this another momentous year for grant success. This always begins with ideas of how to make a difference for Texas and connects that idea with potential funding sources. Many are anxiously awaiting decisions on their proposals, but this has already been the biggest year in the department’s history. Congratulations to Julie Howe, Ph.D., Nithya Rajan, Ph.D., and team on the largest grant we have ever received.
Thanks & Gig 'em!
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| David Baltensperger, Ph.D.
Professor and Department Head
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| Top News from Soil and Crop Sciences
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Soil and Crop Sciences Celebrates August 2023 Graduation
The Department of Soil and Crop Sciences celebrated the graduation of 13 students who received their diplomas on Aug. 12 at Reed Arena.
One undergraduate student and 12 graduate students were among thousands who graduated during the morning ceremony and at the doctoral hooding ceremony Saturday afternoon. The graduate students consisted of seven master’s students and five doctoral students.
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AgriLife Research kicks off climate-smart project
Texas A&M AgriLife Research recently kicked off a $65 million, five-year large scale U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service project to work with Texas’ commodity producers to help adopt climate-smart agriculture and forestry practices, assess benefits and develop models for voluntary market-based climate solutions.
The project is led by AgriLife Research scientists Julie Howe, Ph.D., and Nithya Rajan, Ph.D.
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Texas Agricultural Cooperative Council establishes Tommy Engelke scholarship
The Texas Agricultural Cooperative Council has established a $25,000 scholarship in honor of Tommy Engelke ’75, which will further the education of students within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M University.
The scholarship originated upon the recommendation of Jimmy Roppolo ’69, longtime Texas Agricultural Cooperative Council board member and general manager of United Agricultural Cooperative in El Campo.
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Burke steps into cropping systems research position at Lubbock
The department welcomes assistant professor Joseph Burke, Ph.D., as our new cropping systems agronomy and weed scientist at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Lubbock.
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Increasing the decision-making ability in plant breeding
Postdoctoral research associate Alper Adak, Ph.D., is expanding his research by looking at ways to increase crop production and efficiency with advances in high-throughput phenotyping and genomics through unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.
Read how Adak's research, his family and supervising professor Seth Murray, Ph.D., have been instrumental in his career path.
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Wheat breeding students across U.S. receive Texas drone training
Students from 19 universities nationwide met at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Amarillo to learn how to collect wheat genomic and phenomic data using unmanned aircraft systems during the first Wheat Coordinated Agricultural Project, or WheatCAP, workshop.
The workshop is part of a U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant, which includes creation of a data hub that will be used to bring together public wheat breeding programs across the nation to help improve wheat productivity.
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75th Beaumont Rice Field Day features innovations in rice irrigation, research
The 75th anniversary of the Beaumont Rice Field Day, held in July, featured the latest research on rice varieties, diseases threatening rice and irrigation conservation practices taking place in the U.S.
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Why should I get my soil tested?
Soil testing is a very important step in maintaining healthy crops, lawns and gardens and is helpful in finding out any deficiencies or growing constraints that may be affecting your soil.
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service associate professor Jake Mowrer, Ph.D., explains the importance of soil testing, the best times to test your soil and how you can get your soil tested at the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service Soil, Water and Forage Testing Laboratory.
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Congratulations to B.B. Singh, Ph.D., as he was honored with the Dr. Tai R. Shin and Mrs. You H. Shin Humanitarian Award by the University of Illinois System in recognition for his exemplary impact on humanity by addressing global food security. Singh will be giving an invited lecture at the University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign on Sept. 12.
Congratulations to a number of our faculty who will be honored at the 2023 Tri-Societies annual meeting in St. Louis in November.
• Monte Rouquette, Ph.D., will receive the 2023 Carl Sprengel Agronomic Research Award! The award consists of a certificate, a complimentary ticket to the award ceremony, and a cash award as provided through the Agronomic Science Foundation by the Lena and Maria van der Ploeg Fund and administered by the American Society of Agronomy.
• Ben Wherley, Ph.D., who will be honored with this year’s Crop Science Teaching Award from the Crop Science Society of America.
• Julie Howe, Ph.D., and Tony Provin, Ph.D., each earned the title of of a Soil Science Society of America Fellow for 2023.
• Terry Gentry, Ph.D., and Qingwu Xue, Ph.D., who both will be recognized as Fellows by the Agronomy Society of America.
• Amir Ibrahim, Ph.D., as he will receive the American Society of Agronomy’s International Agronomy Award.
• Several former students will be recorgnized with awards, including Chris Cobos, Sarah Kezar and Ryan Schronk. Cobos earned the Gary Peterson Dryland Soil Management Scholarship; Kezar, the Gerald O. Mott award; and Schronk, the National Student Recognition Program.
• Doctoral students Usha Pedireddi and Bholuram Gurjar have been selected to participate in the 2023 Graduate Student Leadership Conference during the Tri-Societies meeting. Both are doctoral students under Muthu Bagavathiannan, Ph.D. Pedireddi is studying plant breeding, while Gurjar is studying biological and agricultural engineering.
• The contributions of Joe Dixon, Ph.D., will also be recognized by the Soil Science Society of America during the Tri-Societies meeting.
Congratulations also to Julie Howe, Ph.D., as she was named the department’s new Assistant Department Head for Undergraduate Academic Programs.
Congratulations to doctoral student Joe Johnson as he was named the Crowd Favorite Winner for the GIS Map Submission of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association Texas Scholarship contest. Johnson is supervised by Muthu Bagavathiannan, Ph.D.
We want to extend our condolences to Perejitei (Perry) Bekewe’s, Ph.D., family after he passed away on June 11 from injuries sustained in a car accident. Bekewe completed his doctoral degree in 2021 with Haly Neely, Ph.D., and Clark Neely, Ph.D., as co-chairs of his committee. His committee also consisted of Jamie Foster, Ph.D., Katie Lewis, Ph.D., and Tom Boutton, Ph.D. After graduation, Bekewe worked as a postdoctoral research associate in Quirine Ketterings’, Ph.D., lab at Cornell University. Bekewe then started working at Wilbur-Ellis in Washington state in April. He was extremely passionate about agriculture and had big dreams to take all he learned here back to Nigeria in the future. Please keep Bekewe’s family in your thoughts and prayers.
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- Aug. 17-22: Howdy Week
- Aug. 21: First week of classes
- Aug. 29-31: Texas Nutrient Management Planner Certification Short Course
- Sept. 12: South Texas Golf Course Superintendents Association Field Day, College Station
- Oct 9-10: Bennett Trust Land Stewardship Women's Conference, Fredericksburg
- Oct. 18-20: Texas Section Society for Range Management annual meeting, Bastrop
- Oct. 20: World Food Prize Laureate Award Ceremony, Des Moines, Iowa
- Oct. 24-28: Ranch Management University, College Station
- Oct. 29-Nov. 1: 2023 ASA, CSSA, SSSA International Annual Meeting, St. Louis, Mo.
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About the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences
The Department of Soil and Crop Sciences is one of the largest such departments in the nation and is preeminent throughout the world. Through our undergraduate and graduate programs, we're training future leaders, poised to advance soil and crop sciences to solve global issues in human, economic and environmental health. Our world-famous faculty have a presence in every county in Texas. Working in partnership with Texas A&M AgriLife Research and the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, their goal is to conduct soil and crop sciences research through trials and experimentation and then transfer that new knowledge to the public.
aglifesciences.tamu.edu | soilcrop.tamu.edu
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