Serving the High Plains

Semi-arid cropping specialist joins Ag center staff

link QCS Photo: Steve Hansen

Murali Darapurneni joined the staff of the New Mexico State University Agricultural Experiment Station, Tucumcari, two months ago.

QCS Managing Editor

Murali Darapurneni thinks eastern New Mexico farmers should think globally as they farm locally in near-desert conditions and unpredictable rain and snow patterns.

His thinking recalls advice one hears in corporate circles to think globally but act locally.

For two months, Darapurneni has been on the staff of the New Mexico State University Agriculture Experiment Station in Tucumcari. He has post-doctoral degree credentials in agricultural science with specialized knowledge in cropping systems for semi-arid regions like eastern New Mexico.

Leonard Lauriault, superintendent of the experiment station, said Darapurneni’s area of research is very much in keeping with directions local farmers on the center’s advisory committee would like the experiment station pursue.

“They want to see us work with dryland cropping and alternative irrigation systems,” Lauriault said of the advisory committee. Dryland cropping consists of planting crops that can grow with only sparse rainfall in a semi-arid region like Quay County.

Thinking long-term, though, Darapurneni said, the region's farmers could profit from raising some crops that are popular with 700 million people in the developing world. Key crops that can achieve this goal thrive in semi-arid regions like eastern New Mexico, Darapurneni said, since many areas of the developing world have similar climates.

Eastern New Mexico, he said, could host legume crops like chick peas and pigeonpeas, and grain crops like millet, food staples in developing countries that share eastern New Mexico's latitude and desert and near-desert climates.

Alternating such food crops in rotation with “cover crops” like clover, he said, may also enrich soils with nitrogen and help retain moisture and save soil. Some legume crops, he said, actually add nitrogen to the soil. Cover crops can be planted in alternate seasons and during cool seasons to establish root systems that can arrest erosion and retain water in dry years.

“If we grow the crops that meet a combination of local and international food needs,” he said,”we may achieve higher profitability and lower risk than we can with existing cropping systems.”

Darapurneni's doctoral and post-doctoral work at the University of Nebraska dealt with the ideas he would encourage eastern New Mexico farmers to adopt. He has already designated fields at the agriculure experiment station to test different crop rotation systems.

The crops he is suggesting are mostly annuals, plants that live for only one growing season. He recognizes that local farmers are experiencing their first year of near-normal rainfall in many years and are leery of committing to perennial crops when rainfall in the near future is unpredictable.

The unpredictable rainfall is one reason Darapurneni said Tucumcari is an ideal location for the crop research he intends to do.

Darapurneni received a master’s degree from West Texas A&M in 20080 and his Ph.D from Texas A&M in College Station, Texas, in 2012. He recently completed post-doctoral research at the University of Nebraska.

His wife Vijaya Bathina is a dentist in Amarillo and the couple has a son Shrihan, who is two years old.