WESLACO For more than 50 years, scientists at the Texas A&M-Kingsville Citrus Center here have been working out of surplus World War II army barracks dragged to Weslaco after the closing of the Harlingen Air Force Base.
“They were old structures when they got here in 1947,” said Dr. Jose Amador, director of the Texas A&M Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Weslaco. “And despite major renovations in 1973 and again in 1997, the labor and expense of building maintenance has simply become cost prohibitive. We are still able to operate, but we do need new facilities.”
A proposal for a new building will go before the state Legislature when it convenes in January with a request for funding via tuition revenue bonds. Final approval for the $7.7 million facility must then come from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
“General Marc Cisneros, the president of Texas A&M University in Kingsville, has made building a new Citrus Center in Weslaco a major initiative in his vision of the university’s future in the Rio Grande Valley,” said Amador.
Dr. John da Graca, deputy director at the Citrus Center, said a special study committee was appointed to assess present and future needs and develop a proposal for the new building.
“Based on that comprehensive study,” da Graca said, “the proposal is to build a 34,000 square foot facility that will support research, education and training in citrus production. In addition, President Cisneros wants to include classrooms designed to offer Valley students distance learning courses from all the colleges at Texas A&M-Kingsville.”
In addition to housing offices, laboratories and classrooms, the study committee recommended the construction of additional screenhouses and greenhouses, all of which would be built adjacent to the current Experiment Station, Extension Service and USDA facilities in Weslaco.
“Having all these entities on the same physical campus will foster closer cooperation among scientists and increase synergism among the various units,” said Amador.
The committee also recommended the demolition of the antiquated Citrus Center structures, while retaining newer, nearby buildings that house graduate students. Additional student apartments, Amador said, could be built in the future at the site of the old building.
For 53 years, the Texas A&M-Kingsville Citrus Center at Weslaco, formerly the Texas A&I Citrus Center, has served Texas citrus growers with research-based scientific information and advice to help solve local problems, while offering continuing education courses to update growers on new research developments.
While the Citrus Center is most widely recognized for having developed the highly popular red grapefruit varieties including the Star Ruby and Rio Red varieties, its scientists are also recognized for establishing populations of beneficial insects to control pests, testing new pesticides and fungicides, developing orchard and cultural practices for improved production, and more recently for establishing a budwood certification program to provide nurseries with virus-free budwood.
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