Associate Professor, Environmental Plant Physiology
Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center,
2415 East Business 83, Weslaco, TX 78596
Phone: 956-969-5643
Fax: 956-969-5620
Email: jljifon@ag.tamu.edu
Dr. John Jifon is an Associate Professor of Plant EcoPhysiology at the Weslaco AgriLife Research and Extension Center and Department of Horticultural Sciences. His research focus includes identifying key environmental limitations on productivity, elucidating the mechanisms that enable plants to cope with environmental stresses, and, developing physiological strategies to mitigate stress effects and increase production efficiency, quality and cropping system sustainability. Areas of current research concentration include (i) optimizing pre-harvest agronomic practices to improve the nutritional/health quality of food crops, (ii) exploring physiological strategies to improving on-farm water use efficiency, water productivity and water conservation, and (iii) evaluating a range of lignocellulosic feedstocks for adaptability and agronomic performance (water/nutrient use, yield, energy density) under semiarid subtropical conditions.
Dr. Jifon obtained his Ph.D. at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and his MS and BS degrees at Mississippi State University and The University of Edinburgh, U.K., respectively. Prior to joining TAMU, he worked at the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agric. Sciences (IFAS), Citrus Research and Education Center, Lake Alfred FL as a PostDoctoral Research Associate, on radiation stress and elevated carbon dioxide concentration effects on citrus.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Jifon J.L. and G.E. Lester. 2009. Foliar potassium fertilization improves fruit quality of field-grown muskmelon on calcareous soils in south Texas. J. Sci Food and Agr. 89: 2452–2460.
Lester, G.E., J.L. Jifon and D.J. Makus. 2010. Impact of potassium nutrition on post harvest fruit quality: Melon (Cucumis melo L) case study. Plant and Soil 335:117–131.
Jifon, J.L., Lester G.E., Crosby K.M., and Leskovar D.I. 2009. Improving the Quality Attributes of Melons through Modified Mineral Nutrition. Acta Hort. 841:537-540.
Lester, G.E., Jifon J.L., and Crosby K.M. 2009. Superoxide dismutase activity in mesocarp tissue from divergent Cucumis melo L genotypes. Plant Foods Hum Nutr. 64:205–211.
Jifon, J.L., K.M. Crosby, D.I. Leskovar and M. Miller. 2008. Possible Physiological Mechanisms for Resistance to Vine Decline Diseases in Grafted Watermelons. Acta Hort. 782:329-334.
Damaj, M.B., P.D. Beremand, M.T. Buenrostro-Nava, J. Ivy, S.P. Kumpatla, J.L. Jifon, G. Beyene, Q Yu, T.L. Thomas and T.E. Mirkov. 2010. Isolating promoters of multigene family members from the polyploidy sugarcane genome by PCR-based walking in BAC DNA. Genome 3:840-847.