Scientist developed pesticide alternative

Perry Adkisson, a Texas A&M University entomologist whose research into the control of cotton-feeding insects led to integrated pest management principles that revolutionized crop production across the globe, has died. He was 91.

Adkisson, chancellor of Texas A&M System from 1986 to 1990, was the first scientist to be honored with all three of the world’s major agriculture prizes — the World Food Prize, the Wolf Prize and the Alexander von Humboldt Award. He also was the first Texas A&M professor to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most elite group of scientists.

“He was a very smart, hardworking scientist with a unique ability to identify and solve problems,” said Ray Frisbie, a former head of A&M’s department of entomology who described Adkisson as his mentor. “He was a visionary who looked into the future of agriculture and saw its reliance on pesticides wasn’t a sustainable way of doing business.”

Adkisson passed away in Bryan June 25 after a lengthy illness, according to the family obituary.

He was born on March 11, 1929 on the family’s cotton/soybean farm in Arkansas. He got his bachelor’s degree from the University

of Arkansas, served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and completed advanced academic work at Kansas State University and Harvard before coming to Texas A&M in 1958.

As Texas A&M’s chancellor, Adkisson was instrumental in bringing the George H.W. Bush presidential library and museum to the school, a huge coup that involved fending off a challenge from a combined bid by the University of Houston and Rice. Not long before Bush was scheduled to make his final decision, Adkisson pointedly provided the president with data showing most Texas A&M students voted for him while most at UH and Rice voted for Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis.

But it was for the his research into the control of cotton pests — specifically, the boll worm and boll weevil — that was Adkisson’s biggest achievement. The approach pioneered by Adkisson resulted in a 50 percent reduction of insecticide use on U.S. crops while maintaining or increasing yields.

Adkisson’s ideas were born of basic science insights into the bollworm, a moth larva that attacks the fruiting bodies of certain crops, especially cotton. Adkisson noticed it spends winter in a quiescent state much like hibernation and developed the strategy that farmers plant earlier in the year and destroy crop residue following harvest so the insects can’t hibernate there.

The most important application was with the boll weevil, a kind of beetle that was discovered in the High Plains of Texas in 1962. The insect, which can destroy cotton, already had run many other Southern farmers out of business and resulted in heavy insecticide use. At one time, a third of the insecticide used in the U.S. was used to combat boll weevils.

Adkisson’s pest control program not only prevented the insect’s spread, it eventually eliminated it in the High Plains.

“You can’t imagine how many pounds of insecticide would have been applied if the boll weevil had become established in the High Plains,” Adkisson said in a 2013 interview in which he called the insect’s eradication his most significant achievement. “Farmers in other parts of Texas were applying as many as 15 to 20 applications per year to control the pest.”

Adkisson also spoke proudly about how his integrated pest management principles were applied to food crops around the world, noting in a 1997 interview that the world’s largest such program is with rice in southeast Asia. Until then, he noted, “people were getting poisoned by pesticide residues and mosquitoes that carry malaria were becoming resistant to pesticides.”

Adkisson’s work took to him to every continent and the South Pole. In the 2013 interview, he told of the pleasure he received drinking Scotch whiskey with 2,000-year-old ice taken from deep drilling being done at the Pole during his visit as chairman of the Polar committee for the National Science Board.

As head of entomology at Texas A&M, Adkisson recruited some of the field’s top scientists, turning the program, solid when he took over, into one of the nation’s best, according to Perry. He also mentored a number of students who would go on to become prominent entomologists, famously recruiting students with the philosophy that “an entomologist is a biologist with a job,” a slogan he had emblazoned on a T-shirt he frequently wore.

As chancellor, Adkisson worked with the Texas Legislature and U.S. Congress to increase funding by almost 50 percent for research, teaching and extension programs of the Texas A&M System. He led the effort that added four universities to the system — Corpus Christi State University, Texas A&I, Laredo State University and West Texas State University. They are now known as Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Texas A&MKingsville, Texas A&M International and West Texas A&M University, respectively.

The Institute of Biosciences and Technology in Houston also was established during his chancellorship.

Adkisson is survived by his wife Gloria, daughter Amanda, two stepchildren and four grandchildren.