Plant geneticist and breeder Russell Jessup has been named director of the Texas A&M AgriLife Analysis and Extension Middle at San Angelo. The appointment places a number one hemp scientist on the head of a number one analysis group in west central Texas, and three different state analysis amenities.
Jessup’s work contains constructing networks round drought-tolerant annuals like hemp, sorghum, millet and perennial pasture grasses. “These are all feedstocks with quite a few value-added bioproduct potentialities,” he stated.
Jessup’s appointment comes at a time when Texas A&M is pushing the boundaries of agricultural innovation and displays the college’s continued give attention to increasing the attain of the commercial hemp sector, addressing points like drought tolerance and enhancing soil well being, areas of significant concern in Texas farming.
Sizzling-weather hemp
His work in hemp genetics has been instrumental in growing hemp varieties suited to Texas’ rising circumstances. Jessup’s most up-to-date success has been in growing dual-purpose varieties for fiber and grain manufacturing that may develop within the state’s scorching, humid, and infrequently dry local weather – circumstances which have traditionally stymied hemp cultivation within the area. That analysis, a part of a Nationwide Institute of Meals and Agriculture-funded program, goals to fill a major hole in southern hemp breeding packages.
Jessup’s analysis groups are additionally concerned in exploring hemp’s medicinal potential, together with its potential position in most cancers therapies.
‘World imaginative and prescient’
In his new position as director, Jessup is poised to information the Texas A&M AgriLife Analysis and Extension Middle in advancing these tasks whereas broadening the scope of its analysis initiatives. As middle director at San Angelo, he’ll supervise and coordinate all elements of the middle’s operations and people of its related analysis station in Sonora, the Carl and Bina Sue Martin Analysis Ranch close to Menard, and the Learn Analysis Ranch in Ozona.
“I plan to increase an built-in, adaptive, and international imaginative and prescient of team-based analysis and extension as the middle director at San Angelo,” stated Jessup, whose analysis tasks up to now have obtained $8 million in funding.
Since 2023, Jessup has served as an AgriLife Analysis industrial hemp and perennial grass breeder and a professor within the Texas A&M Division of Soil and Crop Sciences. He beforehand served AgriLife Analysis and the division from 2009-2016 as an assistant professor and from 2016-2023 as an affiliate professor.
