Research

Field Research: Our lab is focused to address one of the major issues encountered by the Southern High Plains agriculture, which is water scarcity. We use various irrigation management strategies to optimize water use for sustaining the productivity of important horticultural and non-traditional agronomic crops in the region. We also use soil amendments like biochar to improve soil physical, chemical and biological properties and see how these amendments interact with the deficit irrigation and improve the productivity. We aim to enhance the water use efficiency - “more crop per drop”. We also involve crop growth modeling techniques to provide insights how crops respond to various climate variations.

Controlled Environment/Greenhouse Research: We have research projects in greenhouse year-round. We have various experiments that compare organic vs. inorganic fertilizer treatments for summer and winter crops. Quantitative as well as qualitative parameters analyses are our valuable approach to see the differences in the treatments. We conduct pot as well as hydroponic experiments and apply this knowledge to improve the yield and quality of vegetable crops. Apart from this, salt stress and water stress research projects are being conducted in the greenhouse.

High Tunnel Research: We have two high tunnels (30' x 96' each) where we conduct season extension research. We are looking at the potential of high tunnels production of summer and winter vegetables and see its applicability in Lubbock, TX region. We address the market demand and try to produce the quality of produce that can meet the demand criteria.