Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Department of Soil and Crop Sciences

Corn & Sorghum

Texas farmers produce more than 200 million bushels of corn on 2.0 million acres every year. Texas corn, which is used in feeds, foods, and industrial products, contributes annually more than 1.2 billion dollars to Texas agriculture economy. Nation wide, corn is the largest cash crop with 85 million acres of corn harvested each year producing 7 to 9 billion bushels.

Because of its heat and drought tolerance, grain sorghum plays a critical role in agronomic cropping systems throughout the state of Texas. In Texas, the crop is grown on approximately three million acres each year with annual production averaging 130 million bushels. In addition to its importance in Texas as a grain crop, it is also very important as a forage, hay and silage crop.

Faculty/Staff

Research Interests

  • Improvement of maize for sustainable productivity and value-added profitability
  • Tolerance and resistance of maize to abiotic (drought and heat tolerance) and biotic stress (aflatoxin)
  • Development of maize inbred lines and populations with improved performance, quality (high lysine QPM) and processing properties for foods, feeds and industrial products
  • Develop improved parental lines of sorghum to create grain sorghum hybrids for feed and food uses
  • Develop improved sorghum lines to produce forage sorghum hybrids for grazing, silage, and hay production
  • Develop sorghum germplasm with enhanced resistance to disease and abiotic stresses for use in sorghum breeding programs

Related Sites of Interest