Texas Tech’s Davis College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources this week highlighted a significant academic distinction: one of its leading plant geneticists has served as guest executive editor of a newly released international research volume examining how crops endure under stress.
The research emphasizes the interconnected nature of resilience, incorporating insights from molecular biology, biochemistry, genomics, physiology, and emerging agricultural technologies.
The special issue, published as open access in Current Plant Biology and titled Resilience of Crop Yield Under Marginal Environments and Climate Change, includes four articles authored by faculty affiliated with the university’s Department of Plant & Soil Science and their graduate students and post-doctoral researchers.
The compilation solidifies the recognition across the scientific community that traditional plant breeding and gene-centric biology alone are inadequate approaches to answer the challenges posed by water scarcity, rising global temperatures, and continuous decline of natural resources to crop production.
The issue was led by Benildo de los Reyes as the journal’s guest executive editor along with co-editors from Singapore, Japan and Sri Lanka. Reyes, the Bayer CropScience Regents Endowed Chair in Plant Genomics at Texas Tech, described the project as an effort to unite diverse scientific perspectives around a single, complex question: how to sustain crop yields under sub-optimal environments and marginal agro-ecosystems.
It’s an opportunity to bring together different perspectives about a complex topic – yield resilience, Reyes said, noting that the eleven selected articles were chosen to help illuminate the problem at multiple scales, from molecular and genetic mechanisms to agronomic and ecological systems.
The research, he said, emphasizes the interconnected nature of resilience, incorporating insights from molecular biology, biochemistry, genomics, physiology, and emerging agricultural technologies. It is hoped that inspiring more holistic views can eventually bridge the gaps between each critical layer of the inherent biological complexity of resilience, he added.
For Davis College Dean Clint Krehbiel, the work carries particular weight in regions like West Texas. “It is clear that this work is highly relevant to crop agriculture in our semi-arid ecosystem,” he said.
The Davis College contributing studies illustrate the breadth of research inquiry underway at the college.
- Wenxuan Guo | Associate Professor of Crop Ecophysiology & Precision Agriculture at Texas Tech & Texas A&M AgriLife Research | Title: Open cotton boll detection using LiDAR point clouds and RGB images from unmanned aerial systems. Guo, who joined Davis College in 2016 after working as a global environmental modeling scientist for Monsanto, has long been an advocate for real-world agricultural innovation. His research, a blend of environmental modeling, remote sensing and agronomy, is helping lay the groundwork for data-driven decision-making in the field. His doctorate degree in agronomy is from Texas Tech.
- Isaiah Pabuayon | Assistant Professor | Title: Physiological novelties for salinity tolerance created by transgressive effects and cryptic gene functions unlocked by alien introgression from Oryza rufipogon to Oryza sativa. An international researcher with years of plant genetics, breeding and molecular biology experience both in the Philippines (International Rice Research Institute) and the U.S., joined the faculty in 2024. His research includes novel transgressive rice genotypes for salinity tolerance, the role of chromatin remodelers for drought tolerance, and developing potential plant ideotypes to maximize plant performance and productivity under reduced input environments. His doctoral degree in plant and soil science is from Texas Tech. He co-authored the paper with Benildo de los Reyes.
- Irish Pabuayon |Research Assistant Professor | Title: Dynamics of source-sink relationships in crops under marginal environments. An international researcher with more than a decade of agronomy experience in both the Philippines (International Rice Research Institute) and the U.S., she focuses on field-based research projects on whole-plant physiology, irrigation management, carbon and nutrient partitioning, fertilizer management, high-throughput phenotyping, and sustainable crop production. She joined the faculty in 2024. Her doctorate with concentrations in agronomy and crop physiology is from Texas Tech.
- Glen Ritchie | Former Department of Plant & Soil Science Chair (Currently chair of Iowa State’s Department of Agronomy ) | Title: Open cotton boll detection using LiDAR point clouds and RGB images from unmanned aerial systems. An expert on the environmental factors affecting cotton yield and quality, Ritchie’s research broadly focuses on developing effective and economical water management strategies for crop production in the Southern High Plains. Recent projects include research on cultivar selection, irrigation management, and the effects of persistent and episodic drought on crop growth, morphology, yield and quality. He joined the faculty in 2011. His doctorate in agronomy is from the University of Georgia. He co-authored the paper with Irish Pabuayon.
- Rosalyn Shim | Associate Professor of Plant Breeding & Genetics | Title: Phosphatidic acid accumulation in response to extended cold water imbibition disrupts membrane structure that inhibits germination of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) seeds. Shim joined the Davis College faculty in 2017 after serving on the faculty of Japan’s Laboratory of Plant Molecular Biosystems at Nagoya University and as researcher at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Her research centers on exploring the genetic variation present in the wild relatives of crops that can be used to improve various agronomic traits in crops such as cotton, tomato and rice. She was named to the 2024 class of E. Kika De La Garza Fellows.
CONTACT: Krishna Jagadish, Interim Chair and Professor, Department of Plant & Soil Science, Davis College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources, Texas Tech University at (806) 834-7953 or kjagadish.sv@ttu.edu
0327NM26 | PHOTOS: (Top Row, L to R) Benildo de los Reyes, Wenxuan Guo and Isaiah Pabuayon. (Bottom Row, L to R) Irish Pabuayon, Glen Ritchie and Rosalyn Shim