AgriLife Research is the Agricultural Experiment Station for the State of Texas and has an annual budget of more than $170 million and employs 1,700 people in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M and in the regional research centers. Some 375 doctoral-level scientists are engaged in nearly 600 research projects, with collaborations in more than 30 countries.  Texas AgriLife Research comprises its College Station headquarters, 13 research centers reaching from El Paso to Beaumont and Amarillo to Weslaco, and associated research stations.  Today, Texas AgriLife Research is the state’s premier research agency in agriculture, natural resources, and the life sciences. An agency of the Texas A&M University System, AgriLife Research collaborates with the Texas A&M University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, and others to help fulfill the A&M System’s land-grant mission.  The agency has long supported the efforts of the state’s farmers and ranchers, but its researchers are also developing fruits and vegetables with enhanced nutrition and disease-fighting compounds, leading innovative research for renewable energy sources, and implementing new methods to improve air and water quality.  Texas agriculture has also become more competitive in the global market. One study concluded that annual economic gains from investments in Texas’s public agricultural research have reached more than $1 billion over the past four decades.  The primary department affiliated with the Agronomy Society is the Soil and Crop Sciences Department.  With more than 105 faculty positions spread over all Research and Extension Center across the State and some located with sister Universities in the A&M System the department has provided the fundamental agronomics on crops ranging from cotton, wheat and rice to sugar cane, peanuts, algae, forage and bioenergy crops.