Megha Parajulee

Areas of Expertise

• Cotton Entomology
• Ecological Approaches to Pest Management
• Integrated Pest Management
• Multidisciplinary Cropping Systems
• Production Sustainability

Professional Summary

Megha Parajulee, Ph.D. is a Professor, Faculty Fellow, and Texas A&M Regents Fellow in the Department of Entomology located at Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center, Lubbock. Parajulee joined Texas A&M University in 1994 as a cotton entomologist and is serving as the Cotton Entomology Program Leader since 2001. Parajulee is a leader in cotton entomology and cropping systems research, teaching, and service, with 116 refereed and over 330 non-refereed publications, 160 invited and 300 submitted presentations, and 35 M.S./Ph.D. students mentored, and $4.1 million funding support secured to his program during his career at Texas A&M.

Parajulee’s program focuses on increased use of integrated ecological approaches, grower education of multi-disciplinary approach to crop production, and production sustainability. He has been active internationally with plenary/keynote speaking roles in >20 countries and served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Nepal and Uzbekistan. Parajulee is the founding editor-in-chief of Global Journal of Agriculture and Allied Sciences and co-edited a book on Principles and Practices of Food Security. Parajulee received the Texas A&M Vice Chancellor’s Award in Research Excellence, Faculty Fellow Award, Regents Fellow Award, Texas A&M Vice Chancellor’s Award in Team Research, Entomological Society of America Southwestern Branch IPM Excellence Award, and USDA Southern Region IPM Hall of Fame Award.

Selected Publications

1. Ghimire, R., M. N. Parajulee, P. Acharya, D. P. Dhakal, A. Hakeem, and K. L. Lewis. 2021. Soil acidification in a continuous cotton production system. Agricultural & Environmental Letters 6: e20048. https://doi.org/10.1002/ael2.20048.
2. Hakeem, A., and M. N. Parajulee, M. Ismail, T. Hussain, and K. Lewis. 2021. Influence of cover crops on ground-dwelling arthropod population abundance and diversity in Texas cotton. Southwestern Entomologist 46: 305-317.
3. Ganapathy, S., M. N. Parajulee, M. San Francisco, H. Zhang, and S. L. Bilimoria. 2021. Novel- iridoviral kinase induces mortality and reduces performance of green peach aphids (Myzus persicae) in transgenic Arabidopsis plants. Plant Biotechnology Reports 15:13-25.
4. Dhakal, C. K., K. Lange, M. N. Parajulee, and E. Segarra. 2019. Dynamic optimization of nitrogen in plateau cotton yield functions with nitrogen carryover considerations. Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics 51: 385-401. [Best Paper Award for JAAE in 2019].
5. Jiang, S.L., Y. Dai, Y. Lu, S. Fan, Y. Liu, M.A. Bodlah, M.N. Parajulee, and F.J. Chen. 2018. Molecular evidence for the fitness of cotton aphid, Aphis gossypii, in response to elevated CO2 from the perspective of feeding behavior analysis. Frontiers in Physiology 9: 1444 [doi: 10.3389/fphys.2018.01444].