By: Kay Ledbetter

The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service has hired Fernando Guillen, Ph.D., as the new statewide small grains and oilseed crops specialist in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Texas A&M University. He officially started March 1.

“Dr. Guillen brings a wealth of agronomic experience to AgriLife Extension’s small grains program, and we are excited to have him joining our department and extension unit,” said Larry Redmon, Ph.D., associate department head and AgriLife Extension program leader for the department.
Guillen brings experience
Coming to Texas from Bozeman, Montana, Guillen was a private consultant and a research associate at Montana State University. He earned his master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and his bachelor’s degree from the Juan Misael Saracho Bolivian University in Bolivia. He also was a postdoctoral research scientist at the Northwestern Agricultural Research Center for Montana State University, Kalispell, Montana.
His past research relates to the development and application of new ways to better understand relative changes in cultivar productivity as a result of varying growing conditions in a target region, also known as genotype-by-environment interactions.
Also, Guillen said he includes using innovative crop management protocols to increase crop productivity in his research. Examples would be the use of integrated pest management strategies for weed control and the use of micronutrients as yield enhancers in wheat.
Guillen’s plant breeding activities include developing varieties in corn and wheat, as well as grain amaranth and camelina crops. Most recently, he led the camelina breeding program at Sustainable Oils LLC for the development of superior cultivars to be used as a feedstock for biofuel production. He also worked with their wheat tilling research program at Targeted Growth Inc., which was aimed at identifying specific, proprietary mutation-altered genes with a positive impact in yield.
Guillen’s plans for Texas position
“I believe the Texas small grains specialist position is a strong match between the position’s objectives and my professional background,” Guillen said. “Even before applying for this position, I knew the small grains breeding program at Texas A&M was doing a superb job in the development of superior cultivars in small grains, mainly wheat, for the different wheat growing regions in Texas.
“From a genetic perspective, I was glad to see that the small grains breeding program is already implementing state-of-the-art strategies like the use of gene-editing tools with the ultimate goal of yield enhancement,” he said.
Guillen said it is well recognized that increases in crop productivity arise from the use of both superior genetics and the adoption of optimum crop management protocols for commercial production.
“Thus, my interest falls into defining and using crop management protocols that allow the maximization of productivity of elite wheat cultivars developed for Texas, which in essence consists in closing the gap between the yield potential of a cultivar under optimum growing conditions and the observed yield of a cultivar at the farm level,” he said.
AgriLife Extension outreach needed
“This will require a precise measure of the observed yield gap in the target regions,” he said. “It also requires identifying the major underlying factors explaining the gap, adopting crop management protocols conducive to directly or indirectly reducing the gap, and effectively transferring the technology to the farm.”
To accomplish this, the involvement of agronomists, specialists, plant breeders, soil scientists, plant pathologists, weed scientists and economists is needed, which can be seen as a challenge, he said. “But I prefer to see it as a unique opportunity instead.”
The bottom line is it is one thing to know what is required and another to get the farmers to use it, Guillen said.
“That requires a transfer of technology, and that is where AgriLife Extension is important,” he said.
Other grains and oilseeds
Guillen said his focus will not be on wheat alone. He will work with oats, barley and other small grains as well as oilseed crops such as camelina and canola.
“I have a lot of experience in camelina and collaborated on it with Dr. Gaylon Morgan here in Texas in the past,” he said. “I will try to reintroduce it in those areas where we believe there is potential and also work with canola if the opportunity arises.”
Guillen said when he first started working with camelina in Montana, no one knew anything about the crop, “so we had to show farmers how to grow it through Extension practices. I plan to use that same Extension networking to work with all the important crops here in Texas.”

Writer: Blair Fannin

Dr. Reagan Noland has joined the soil and crop sciences department as the the AgriLife Extension agronomist specializing in crop management at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in San Angelo.

It’s a homecoming of sorts for Noland, who grew up in the San Angelo area helping his grandparents with farm and ranch production.

“I am excited to be back here, and I look forward to serving the agricultural community and working to improve the resilience and profitability of our systems,” Noland said. “Agriculture plays a vital role in the economy of this region, and maintaining long-term productivity relies on an integrated approach to crop, soil, and water management, particularly in our often-dry climate. I hope my experience in this area will benefit producers in West Central Texas.”

Noland said he is eager to begin developing programming designed to help producers in cotton, wheat, corn and grain sorghum, as well as annual and perennial forages.

“There is great potential for diverse and integrated production in this region. Many farm operations also manage livestock or have access to regional feed and hay markets,” he said. “I look forward to developing educational programming that covers a broad range of cropping systems management and identifies opportunities to improve production.”

Noland was previously the grain crops extension specialist at the University of Georgia. He has a bachelor’s degree in natural resource management from Angelo State University, a master’s degree in agronomy from Texas A&M University and a doctorate in agronomy and agroecology from the University of Minnesota.

Noland is a member of the American Society of Agronomy and the Crop Science Society of America.

Writer: Kay Ledbetter, 806-677-5608, skledbetter@ag.tamu.edu
Contact: Dr. Murilo Maeda, 806-746-6101, mmaeda@ag.tamu.edu

Dr. Murilo Maeda is returning to his roots when he trades the Texas coast for the South Plains to take the position as Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service cotton specialist in Lubbock, effective Oct. 1.

“My family’s roots run deep into the cotton industry, and I would like to contribute to its improvement,” Maeda said, as he leaves his position as a Texas A&M AgriLife Research assistant research scientist in Corpus Christi.

“Working out of the Corpus Christi center, I had the opportunity to work with many different crops, but cotton is special to me,” he said. “With that being said, there is no better place than the Southern High Plains to work with cotton.”

As he makes the move to Lubbock, Maeda brings with him a growing expertise on using unmanned aerial systems, or UAS, to assist cotton research.

Maeda said the transition from AgriLife Research to AgriLife Extension will be a change in day-to-day focus as program activities shift to more traditional outreach/educational/applied research.

“But the main goals are still the same – improve agriculture, food security and farmers’ well-being; to make a difference in someone’s life, to have a long-lasting impact,” he said.

With AgriLife Research, his primary focus was UAS platforms and methodologies for high-throughput plant phenotyping and UAS-based applications for plant breeding, agricultural research and precision management applications.

Maeda earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Centro Universitário do Triângulo, Brazil, and master’s and doctorate degrees in agronomy/crop physiology from Texas A&M. Before moving to the U.S., he worked at Netafim Brasil assisting in the development of precision irrigation systems for commercial coffee and citrus farms and with TCMA Agropecuária Ltda, assisting with large soybean, cotton, and corn commercial operations across Brazil.

In 2005, he joined Deltapine/Monsanto’s cotton breeding program as a research assistant. In this position, he served as the breeder’s assistant, designed and conducted breeding research trials across the Brazilian cotton-growing regions, managed breeding-associated field tasks, as well as research databases.

After leaving Deltapine/Monsanto in 2010, Maeda moved to College Station to pursue his master’s and doctorate degrees. While working on his degrees, he served as a graduate teaching/research assistant for the cotton physiology program and the department of soil and crop sciences.

His degrees focused on the morphological and physiological responses of cotton to drought and high-temperature stress, and at Corpus Christi, he was responsible for managing the development of a cropping systems and remote sensing program for agricultural research and crop precision management applications.

Because the South Plains is a completely different region from the Coastal Bend, Maeda said he will need to spend time adapting to the regional culture and farming practices. There will also be a need to establish new working relationships with allied industry, a regional network of county and integrated pest management agents, as well as colleagues both in and out of the Texas A&M University System.

But the South Plains cotton industry also has plenty of issues to put him to work right away.

“You name it: lack of adequate rainfall, hail storms, dwindling water supply for irrigation, pest pressure, diseases, herbicide-resistant weeds, soil fertility, off-target movement of herbicides, crop management issues, and the list goes on,” Maeda said.

“The South Plains is a challenging environment, but that also means there are opportunities to improve. Thankfully, the region is well served with some of the best people working with cotton in the nation and in the world, and by collaborating I am confident we can make a difference.”

One area he is excited to expand in that region is the UAS technology, which he said has great potential to change how agriculture research and farming will be done in the future.

“UAS provides a level of information about the crop’s responses to the environment and/or experimental treatments that we did not have access to before,” Maeda said. “I plan to continue collaborating with our colleagues at Corpus Christi and across the U.S.

“The ultimate goal for me in this new role as it relates to UAS technology is to participate in the development, validation and deployment of UAS-based tools for crop monitoring and management that will improve our farmers’ efficiency and overall farm sustainability.”

As UAS-based educational tools are developed, those will be a great addition to AgriLife Extension’s outreach efforts, he said.