Texas A&M AgriLife Research is the agricultural and life sciences research agency of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

and a part of the

Texas A&M University System The Texas A&M University System is a state university system in Texas and is one of the state's seven independent university systems. The Texas A&M University System is one of the largest systems of higher education in the United States, with a ...

. Formerly named Texas Agricultural Research Service, the agency's name was changed January 1, 2008, as part of a rebranding of Texas A&M AgriLife (formerly Texas A&M Agriculture). The A&M was formally added to the agency's name on September 1, 2012, as part of a branding effort by the Texas A&M University System to strengthen the association between the agencies and Texas A&M University. The

agricultural experiment station An agricultural experiment station (AES) or agricultural research station (ARS) is a scientific research center that investigates difficulties and potential improvements to food production and agribusiness. Experiment station scientists work with ...

division is headquartered at Texas A&M's flagship campus in

College Station, Texas College Station is a city in Brazos County, Texas, United States, situated in East-Central Texas in the Brazos Valley, towards the eastern edge of the region known as the Texas Triangle. It is northwest of Houston and east-northeast of Austin, ...

. Texas A&M AgriLife Research serves all 254 Texas counties and operates 15 research centers throughout the state. Texas A&M AgriLife Research specialists in beef cattle have produced the world's largest set of gene-mapping resources for beef cattle and have

cloned Cloning is the process of producing individual organisms with identical genomes, either by natural or artificial means. In nature, some organisms produce clones through asexual reproduction; this reproduction of an organism by itself without ...

what is believed to be the first animal—a calf—specifically cloned for disease resistance.

History

The history of Texas A&M AgriLife Research began with the founding of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (Texas A.M.C.) in 1871, the state's first public institute of higher education. Initially, the university did not offer any agricultural classes, leading to protests by farmer groups and much of college's leadership being replaced. Despite the new curriculum in agriculture and engineering, the college's enrollment continued to drop. The land-grant colleges around the country were struggling. With the ample land available in the West, most farmers had little incentive to adopt

intensive farming Intensive agriculture, also known as intensive farming (as opposed to extensive farming), conventional, or industrial agriculture, is a type of agriculture, both of arable farming, crop plants and of Animal husbandry, animals, with higher levels ...

methods and other advanced agricultural technologies. As with Texas A.M.C., the agricultural colleges were being criticized for not actually giving their students the training that would enable them to return to their family farms, and instead the graduates were leaving the farm life altogether. For most observers, however, the biggest issue was that no solid agricultural research on which to base the practical teaching was being attempted, so to fill this need, Congress passed the Hatch Experiment Station Act of 1887, which provided funding for agricultural experiment stations in each state. This led to the founding of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in 1887 at Texas A.M.C. This new organization was given the task of conducting research in all aspects of

crop A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. In other words, a crop is a plant or plant product that is grown for a specific purpose such as food, Fiber, fibre, or fuel. When plants of the same spe ...

and

livestock Livestock are the Domestication, domesticated animals that are raised in an Agriculture, agricultural setting to provide labour and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, Egg as food, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The t ...

operations. In 1948, Texas A&M formed the

, incorporating Texas A&M AgriLife Research and six related agencies which are still part of the system today.TAMU System Agency Overview FAQ
In 2007, Elsa Murano, who was overseeing Texas A&M Agriculture as a whole, hired a consulting firm to evaluate the name of Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, as well as other Texas A&M Agriculture organizations. On January 1, 2008, the Experiment Stations' name was changed to Texas AgriLife Research. Murano felt that "AgriLife" better reflected the agency's foundational message that "agriculture is life", while Research better reflected what the organization did. The A&M was formally added to the agency's name on September 1, 2012, as part of a branding effort by the Texas A&M University System to strengthen the association between the agencies and Texas A&M University.

Research highlights

Through its research, the organization helped eradicate Texas fever, a

bovine Bovines (subfamily Bovinae) comprise a diverse group of 10 genera of medium to large-sized ungulates, including Bos, cattle, bison, African buffalo, Bubalus, water buffalos, and the four-horned and spiral-horned antelopes. The members of this gro ...

disease spread by

tick Ticks are parasitic arachnids of the order Ixodida. They are part of the mite superorder Parasitiformes. Adult ticks are approximately 3 to 5 mm in length depending on age, sex, and species, but can become larger when engorged. Ticks a ...

s that threatened the state's cattle industry. In the 1920s, it conducted the first known studies on the crossbreeding of cattle, which went on to become a national practice still in use by the cattle industry. In 1931, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station developed the first mechanical cotton stripper, a machine that would become widely adopted by cotton farmers within a decade. The organization is a world leader in

sorghum ''Sorghum bicolor'', commonly called sorghum () and also known as great millet, broomcorn, guinea corn, durra, imphee, jowar, or milo, is a species in the Poaceae, grass genus ''Sorghum (genus), Sorghum'' cultivated for its grain. The grain i ...

research, having begun with its developing the first known

hybrid in 1955. In the 1950s, it also again came to the aid of the cattle industry by developing techniques for destroying screwworms which were plaguing cattle in Texas and Central America. It also developed the '1015Y'

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' , from Latin ), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus '' Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onion which was classifie ...

, opening the way for Texas to become the leading producer of fresh market onions in America. It helped produce a mild

jalapeño The jalapeño ( , , ) is a medium-sized chili pepper Fruit, pod type cultivar of the species ''Capsicum annuum''. A mature jalapeño chili is long and wide, and hangs down from the plant. The pungency of jalapeño peppers varies, but is usual ...

pepper ('TAM'), increasing the sales of

salsa Salsa most often refers to: * Salsa (food), a variety of sauces used as condiments * Salsa music, a popular style of Latin American music * Salsa (dance), a Latin dance associated with Salsa music Salsa or SALSA may also refer to: Arts and ent ...

, and 'BetaSweet' carrots which have higher levels of

beta carotene Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

. Its animal researchers helped produce

gene mapping Gene mapping or genome mapping describes the methods used to identify the location of a gene on a chromosome and the distances between genes. Gene mapping can also describe the distances between different sites within a gene. The essence of all ...

resources for cattle, and lead to the cloning of the first calf.

Center locations

*Amarillo *Beaumont *Corpus Christi *Dallas *El Paso *Fort Stockton *Lubbock *Overton *Pecos *San Angelo *Stephenville *Temple *Uvalde *Vernon *Weslaco

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Texas AandM AgriLife Research Texas A&M University System Government agencies established in 1887 AgriLife Research, Texas AandM Scientific organizations established in 1887