Persona

Jones, Don L.

Don L. Jones was born in Wisconsin, IL. He came to Texas in 1917 to study condensed milk at a plant in West Texas. Jones decided to move to Lubbock, where he worked at the Texas Agricultural Extension Service (TEES) substation with a grain sorghum breeder, R. E. Karper from 1917-1927. He briefly became superintendent of the Chillicothe Substation, then returned to Lubbock as superintendent for the TEES in 1928.

During the 1920s, Jones changed his research focus to cotton during a cotton shortage in Texas and became one of the leading cotton breeding experts in the nation. Jones later became the head of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station (Number 8, part of Texas A&M University System, known as TAEX) in Lubbock, Texas from 1928-1960. He received an honorary doctorate in agriculture at Texas A&M College in 1960, for his 42 years working with the Agricultural Extension Service and Experimental Station.