Fred Bourland, cotton breeder and researcher at the Northeast Research and Extension Center at Keiser, examines cotton varieties being tested in research plots at the Lon Mann Cotton Research Station at Marianna. (U of A System Division of Agriculture photo by Fred Miller)
KEISER, Ark. When Fred Bourland left the family cotton farm in Mississippi County for the University of Arkansas, clear across the state in Fayetteville, he had anything but farming on his mind.
“I grew up around cotton,” Bourland said. “When I went to college, I was planning to get as far away from cotton as I could.”
Jinfa Zhang, a professor, Cotton Breeding, Genetics, and Genomics, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, is the 2020 Cotton Genetics Research Award winner.
The announcement was made during the 2021 Beltwide Cotton Improvement Conference, which convened as part of the virtual 2021 Beltwide Cotton Conferences, coordinated by the National Cotton Council.
In Zhang s nomination, Jane Dever, a professor of cotton breeding at Texas A&M AgriLife Research, said he deserved the award for making not only genetic resources available but also rigorously peer-reviewed scientific knowledge unreservedly accessible to the cotton genetics research community, as we all work together to confront future challenges together.