Steve M. Brown is a 1978 graduate in agronomy and soils from Auburn University and later earned MS and PhD degrees in agronomy/weed science at Auburn and Texas A&M, respectively. He worked as an assistant county agent in a cotton pest management role for a couple of years in northern Alabama and then served as a research associate in a Cotton Incorporated-funded project on no-till cotton from 1980 to 1984. From 1987 until 2008, he served as an Extension weed scientist and cotton agronomist for the University of Georgia in Tifton. He worked for a major seed and biotechnology company from 2008 until 2019, when he joined the faculty at Auburn. His entire career has focused on cotton.
Fred Bourland, University of Arkansas, has been involved in cotton breeding since 1970, when he was a graduate student. During his career, he has developed several cotton measurements to describe variation in cotton lines and developed, described, and released nearly 100 cotton lines and cultivars. He has also been directly involved with cotton variety testing since 1978.
Steve Hague is the chairperson of the Department of Crop, Soil, and Environmental Sciences in the Auburn University College of Agriculture. He was previously a professor in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Texas A&M University. His research has covered a wide variety of cotton-breeding topics, including enhancement of germplasm diversity, drought tolerance, Fusarium resistance, remote sensing with UAVs, yield components, fiber quality, and insect resistance.
