Texas Research Geneticist Receives 2000 Cotton Genetics Research Award

Dr. Norma Trolinder, a pioneering cotton research geneticist in West Texas, is the recipient of the 2000 Cotton Genetics Research Award.

The announcement was made here today during a joint session of the Cotton Improvement and Physiology conferences of the National Cotton Council-coordinated 2001 Beltwide Cotton Conferences. She received $500 in recognition of her excellent work.

U.S. commercial cotton breeders have presented the Cotton Genetics Research Award for the past 38 years to a scientist for outstanding basic research in cotton genetics. The Joint Cotton Breeding Policy Committee comprised of representatives from state experiment stations, USDA, private breeders and the NCC establishes criteria for the award.

Dr. Don Keim, senior Mid-South cotton breeder with Delta & Pine Land Company and one of Trolinder's nominators, said, "her diligent efforts in the difficult area of plant regeneration from cotton tissue culture overcame a major hurdle in cotton biotechnology. Her work was essential to the successful utilization of transgenic cotton in the industry that we are experiencing today."

In February of 1999, Dr. Trolinder established Genes Plus, a research company specializing in genetic engineering work in Quanah, TX. She was president and research director of Southplains Biotechnology, Inc., in Lubbock for six years prior and was a research scientist for eight years before that at the USDA Cropping Systems Research Lab in Lubbock.

Dr. Trolinder has authored numerous publications and was named the USDA Agricultural Research Service's Early Career Scientist of the Year, Southern Region in 1991 for pioneering research in genetic cotton engineering.

She chaired the 1996 World Congress for the Society of In Vitro Biology and has served as technical advisor for the Texas Cotton Biotechnology Program since 1994 and on the Texas Tech International Textile Research Institute's Board of Advisors since 1996.

Trolinder holds bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Texas Tech University, where she has served as an adjunct professor in the Plant & Soil Sciences Department since 1987.