Jinfa Zhang receives 2020 Cotton Genetics Research Award

Dr Jinfa Zhang, a professor, cotton breeding, genetics, and genomics at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, has won the 2020 Cotton Genetics Research Award. The announcement was made during the 2021 Beltwide Cotton Improvement Conference, which convened as part of the National Cotton Council-coordinated virtual 2021 Beltwide Cotton Conferences. 

Zhang was selected by the joint cotton breeding committee and he received a plaque and a monetary award.

“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,” Dr Jane Dever, a professor of cotton breeding at Texas A&M AgriLife Research, said in a press release.

“Zhang confronted a strategic threat to the US cotton industry from expansion of Fusarium wilt race 4 (FOV4) into Texas and New Mexico with academic integrity and authentic generosity to share knowledge with others. In 2019, he publicly released two Upland cultivars with demonstrated resistance to FOV4 and in the past two years alone has published six peer-reviewed articles on FOV4 with three more in review,” Dever said.

“It takes knowledge of the US cotton industry to anticipate the need for a trait such as FOV4 and then to develop germplasm that will be useful to private breeders in the development of commercial varieties with resistance to FOV4. This a perfect example of basic research conducted by public breeders that is most valuable to the cotton industry,” Dr Mustafa McPherson, a breeder with Corteva, said.

“Zhang is driven to find genetic solution for the industry and holds the rest of us responsible to his drive. His contribution to the research community, has been critical to creating a better understanding of cotton as a field crop and improving the genetics through his germplasm releases of which several have been the basis of new breakthroughs in BASF’s program for fibre quality with the added benefit of increased production,” Dr Margaret Shields, BASF’s global cotton breeding lead, said in the release.

Zhang earned a bachelor, master and doctor in Agronomy from Central China Agricultural University and his PhD in plant genetics and molecular biology at the University of Arkansas.

Before joining New Mexico State University in 2002 as an assistant professor, Zhang conducted research at Central China Agricultural University, the University of Arkansas, McGill University and Monsanto. He has more than 170 peer-reviewed scientific publications and 150 proceeding papers and abstracts along with 10 cultivar, 22 germplasm releases, and one genetic population of 95 recombinant inbred lines. Zhang received the Crop Science Society of America’s Editor’s Citation for Excellence award in 2016.