From ladybugs to boll weevils, Teague’s career has seen it all
June 17, 2026
By Mary Hightower
University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture
Fast Facts
- Teague winds up 38 years for ASU, UADA
- “I just work for the people of Arkansas” —Teague
(1,300 words)
DOWNLOAD related art of Teague speaking, Judd Hill, in-field images
JONESBORO, Ark. — For Tina Gray Teague, it all started with ladybugs.
“My earliest memories are on my family’s cotton farm in Caraway,” she said. “Out on the farm, I was fascinated with ladybugs, and I collected jars and jars of them.
“When I was 4 years old, my mother was putting away laundry and opened my underwear drawer to discover a swarm of live ladybugs,” she said.
Teague, professor of entomology and plant science, with appointments at Arkansas State University and the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, is retiring in June after 38 years. Her career also includes three years with the Rio Farms Agricultural Research Foundation, Monte Alto, Texas, from 1986-1988.
Except for her Texas sojourn, she ends a career largely spent in her native Arkansas Delta.
Her interest in insects grew with her first pinned collection in fourth grade. In attending schools in Marianna, Trumann and Marked Tree, she had teachers who inspired her love of science.
“I was no cowboy”
Teague said she enjoyed collecting and reading about insects but never considered it an option for formal study in college.
“As an undergraduate at Fayetteville, I was a zoology major, and my major focus was on fish and ichthyology,” she said. I didn’t take a formal entomology course because entomology was taught over in agriculture. Well, I was no cowboy; I wanted to be a scientist.”
A statistics course changed her mind about the College of Agriculture.
“I loved the caring and friendly atmosphere in the college,” she said. “It was so different than what I experienced in the biology department.”
Teague opted to take entomology in her last semester, and Max Meisch, University Professor emeritus, encouraged her to continue her graduate studies in entomology. Another entomology professor, Jake Phillips, would later recruit her to work in cotton instead of rice.
“I’m so lucky to have gotten to spend my career in cotton wearing sneakers rather than rubber boots in the rice field!” Teague said.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology and a master’s degree in entomology from the University of Arkansas. She moved on to Texas A&M University to work with boll weevils and bollworms and earn her Ph.D. in entomology.
Boll weevils
Early in her Arkansas career, Teague worked on finding less expensive tactics for boll weevil eradication.
National planning for eradication of the invasive boll weevil began in the 1950s. Decades of public research efforts by USDA ARS and university scientists built the tools for a successful program for the US cotton belt. Eradication programs were initiated in North Carolina by the late 1980s. The Arkansas Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation was organized in 1993, and the eradication effort began in 1997. The boll weevil was declared eradicated by 2008. The foundation continues a maintenance program that monitors weevils and ensures the state remains weevil-free.
“The boll weevil project was needed because farmers and land owners in the biggest production areas of Craighead and Mississippi counties were reluctant to vote for the program when the eradication costs were higher than their typical insect pest control costs.”
The research included plots at the Judd Hill Foundation Farm near Trumann.
“I still have ongoing work at Judd Hill. It’s a very special place,” she said.
“The post-eradication era brought forward a whole new world for Mid-South cotton. Our farmers were on a treadmill of using insecticides, and insects were the limiting factor for cotton production,” Teague said. “After eradication and after adoption of BT and Roundup Ready Cotton varieties, there were amazing advances in integrated pest management and sustainable cotton production.”
COTMAN
One major project was COTMAN — an award-winning computerized management system for cotton.
“I was fortunate to be able to work closely with the UA COTMAN team, which included Fred Bourland, Derrick Oosterhuis, Phil Tugwell, Mark Cochran and Diana Danforth,” she said. “That included Dr. Bill Robertson, our state extension cotton specialist. What an amazing group!”
Fred Bourland is a professor and cotton breeder for the Division of Agriculture. Oosterhuis was a Distinguished Professor of crop physiology, Tugwell was an entomology researcher and professor, and Cochran was an agricultural economist at the time and later rose to head the Division of Agriculture. Danforth is a senior research associate at the University of Arkansas.
After Tugwell retired in 2002, “Tina assumed the role of lead investigator for our COTMAN development and research team,” Bourland said.
“Tina began and continues to use COTMAN growth patterns in her research to identify and describe subtle and elusive effects of insects and various inputs on plant growth,” he said. “She was and continues to be a true disciple and has pushed the concepts beyond what we envisioned.”
Soil and water
Teague’s research has focused on crop management systems for sustainable cotton and row crop production systems in the Arkansas Delta. She has been principal investigator or co-principal investigator on grants totaling $12.9 Million at Arkansas State University in collaboration with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture. She has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed articles, conference proceedings and presentations.
While working on integrated pest management projects, Teague said she was approached by northeast Arkansas crop consultants who wanted A-State to organize a winter meeting where they could get continuing education units for soil and water education credits.
Teague then recruited local U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service and Division of Agriculture colleagues, and she organized the first Arkansas Soil and Water Education Conference, which had its 28th annual iteration in 2026.
But it was the 25th anniversary meeting that held something special for Teague as the conference steering committee initiated the Dr. Tina Gray Teague Scholarship. The scholarship goes to an outstanding woman graduate student in Arkansas working in soil and water conservation.
A family rooted in the Delta
Teague’s family is firmly rooted in the Delta. Her grandmother, an Arkansas State graduate, encouraged her father to leave the cotton farm and finish college there.
“My first memories are on a cotton farm in Craighead County and then living with my parents in married student housing on the campus at A-State,” she said. “I tell folks it was my destiny to end up as a cotton researcher at A-State.”
She and her husband Paul, an agricultural economist who grew up on a vegetable farm in Alma, both worked in Texas and were later offered faculty positions at Arkansas State.
Retirement
Teague won’t be sitting still in retirement. She and her husband, a licensed boat captain, will continue to do some boating up and down the Mississippi River or catch the races at Oaklawn Park. Plus, there’s a 2-year-old granddaughter across the river in Memphis, Tennessee, who will need some visiting.
Teague’s children are all Razorbacks. Her son Jack is a University of Arkansas biological and agricultural engineering grad; her daughter Zoe majored in soil, water and environmental sciences. Their spouses also work in ag and natural resources.
There may also be more natural resources work in Teague’s future.
“I’m super interested in progress to conserve our groundwater. Efforts for managed recharge of the Alluvial Aquifer should be encouraged and supported in the state, and I’ll do what I can to help garner support for the efforts,” Teague said.
“Arkansas is a great place to work in agricultural research,” Teague said. “The folks in our state tend to work together to solve problems.
“I have been fortunate to have had a joint appointment with the UADA and A-State College of Agriculture,” she said. “That ag partnership is special, and most other states have too much tribalism to have joint appointments like it. Dr. Milo Shult understood the value of joint appointments from his work in Texas, where he saw the benefits from partnerships between A&M and Texas Tech.
“When Arkansas folks asked if I was a Razorback or an Indian and later a Red Wolf,” she said, “I always responded, ‘I just work for the people of Arkansas.’”
Shult served as head of the Division of Agriculture from 1992-2010 and was a supporter of the UADA and A-State partnership.
“Tina is a wonderful communicator and advocate for entomology, the cotton industry, the University of Arkansas and Arkansas State University,” Bourland said. “We need more principled professionals like her.”
To learn more about ag and food research in Arkansas, visit aaes.uada.edu. Follow the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station on LinkedIn and sign up for our monthly newsletter, the Arkansas Agricultural Research Report. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit uada.edu. To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit uaex.uada.edu.
About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system.
The Division of Agriculture is one of 22 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on three system campuses.
Pursuant to 7 CFR § 15.3, the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs and services (including employment) without regard to race, color, sex, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, sexual preference, pregnancy or any other legally protected status, and is an equal opportunity institution.
# # #
Media contact:
Nick Kordsmeier
nkordsme@uada.edu