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AgriLife Research hires new crop stress scientistTexas Dr. Qingwu Xue may hail from China, but he knows Texas wheat and what stresses it out. Xue began Dec. 1 as an assistant professor and crop stress physiologist with Texas AgriLife Research in Amarillo, returning to the area after conducting about 13 years of research in other parts of the country, primarily the northern Great Plains. Xue earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Shaanxi Normal University in China in 1985, a master's in plant eco-physiology at The Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1988 and another master's degree in agriculture at West Texas A&M University in Canyon in 1995. He earned his doctorate in agronomy from the University of Nebraska in 2000. His experience with Texas crops began when he came to the U.S. as a visiting scientist working at the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service Conservation and Production Research Laboratory at Bushland from 1992-1994. There, his research project was aimed at improving crop water-use efficiency under water stress, primarily looking at the importance of root growth and water uptake for winter wheat grown under minimal irrigation. Xue spent two more years working on increasing drought resistance in winter wheat, this time with the Dryland Agriculture Institute at West Texas A&M, before moving to Nebraska to pursue his doctorate at the School of Natural Resources Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He later spent eight years at the Northwestern Agricultural Research Center of Montana State University researching the ability of spring wheat to compete with wild oats and evaluating herbicides for weed control. His final move before returning to Texas was in 2008 when he took the position as a research scientist at North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station at North Dakota State University in Mandan, N.D. The primary focus of his research there was with perennial crops for bioenergy production in the northern Great Plains. "All this experience has prepared me to work with other area scientists--breeders, agricultural meteorologists, agronomists, agricultural engineers, entomologists, weed scientists--to solve the real problems of producers in this area," Xue said. Coming to Amarillo, he said, he knows his research program must serve the producers first; and therefore his work will be adjusted to their needs and be aimed at presenting new information to them through the Texas AgriLife Extension Service and commodity groups. "We are delighted to have recruited a scientist of Dr. Xue's education, regional experience and ability to assume the critical faculty position in crop stress physiology after the 2008 departure of Dr. Bill Payne," said Dr. John Sweeten, resident director for the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Amarillo. Payne, after nine years with AgriLife Research at Amarillo/Bushland, became the associate director for research at the Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture on the Texas A&M University campus in College Station. "We are confident that Dr. Xue can fill those big shoes rather quickly," Sweeten said. Xue said his Amarillo-based research program will place a high priority on conserving irrigation water while maximizing yield for the area crops. "We want to use natural precipitation and get the best water-use efficiency from the little irrigation water applied, especially on wheat where irrigation is most often limited," Xue said. "We want to improve crop yield under stress conditions," he said, adding the primary abiotic stresses are drought and heat and the primary biotic stresses are insects, diseases and weeds. "My program will be directed at these multiple stresses and their interactions under field conditions," Xue said.
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