Johnie N. Jenkins, Ph.D.

The U.S. cotton industry accounts for more than $21 billion in products and services and more than 125,000 jobs annually.

Much of the foundation for this remarkable success in cotton production, trade and manufacturing is the result of decades of research by Johnie Jenkins, an acclaimed senior scientist at the Department of Agriculture.

During an astonishing 64-year career at USDA, Jenkins conducted pivotal research to eradicate the voracious boll weevil from cotton plants, heading the field team that introduced the pest-resistance Bt cotton variety that is now the industry standard. Further research led to another cotton breed resistant to two types of harmful nematodes, or roundworm.

His achievements have provided wide-ranging benefits both for the industry and the environment, including higher cotton yields and reduced need for harmful insecticides. And cotton growers’ increased profits have helped boost local, state and federal economies.

“All cotton producers have benefited from [his] research,” said Jack McCarty, a USDA research agronomist. “Time and again, he has developed pest-resistant cotton plants that have then been adopted by the cotton industry.”

Born in a small Arkansas town in 1934, Jenkins participated in a youth development program, 4-H, sponsored by the USDA and later jumpstarted his career during a summer internship where he worked on cotton breeding and cotton insect control.

Starting at USDA in 1961, Jenkins became a pioneer in leading studies of host-plant resistance. Estimates at that time suggested the boll weevil had caused between $15 and $23 billion in damage since entering the U.S. in 1895. Ominously, the boll weevil and other destructive pests had developed resistance to insecticides.

One of Jenkins’ early contributions was a field study indicating a sterile insect technique that eradicated the screwworm parasite in the U.S. would not be effective against the boll weevil. He and his team explored transgenic technology, introducing genes from a soil bacterium with insecticide properties into the various cultivated species of cotton.

Working closely with biotech stakeholders, the Environmental Protection Agency and USDA, Jenkins and his team developed protocols for safety and reliability, enabling Bt cotton, a genetically modified cotton variety that produces proteins that kill certain insect pests, to be quickly commercialized, adopted and used.

He also developed cotton lines for cottonseed oil used in food production that has higher levels of oleic acid, a healthier fatty acid. And he came up with techniques to estimate the dollar value of each boll on a cotton plant, providing farmers around the world with data to inform their management strategies. More recently, Jenkins worked on breeding a fire-resistant cotton variety.

But cotton now grows on 90% of U.S. cotton acres, located primarily across the South.

“Johnie Jenkins is one of the people quietly delivering results, year over year,” said Don Jones, a director in agriculture research at the nonprofit Cotton Incorporated.

Jenkins calls it a “real joy” to do rewarding research and discover advances that help farmers.

“Having grown up on a small cotton and dairy farm to get to where I am today is the American dream,” he said. “This is the best country in the world. I don’t know anywhere else I could have done this.”