PULLMAN — Washington State University announced on Thursday that agronomist and soil scientist Surendra Singh has been selected to head the university’s Lind Dryland Research Station, according to a WSU press release.

“Dryland wheat production in Washington is not only important from an economic standpoint, but also for global food security,” Singh said in the press release. “As rainfall patterns change, cost of fertilizers and other inputs rise, and weed and pest pressures increase, research at Lind and WSU keeps us ahead and ready.”

Singh comes to WSU’s Lind Dryland Research Station from Oregon State University, where has worked as a postdoctoral scholar at OSU’s Columbia Basin Agricultural Research Center in Pendelton, and succeeds long-time director Bill Schillinger, who retired in early 2022.

WSU founded the Lind station in 1915 to research farming in one of the driest places in Washington state, the press release said, noting that Lind receives an average of around 12 inches of rainfall every year — very neatly the bare minimum needed to grow wheat and barley without irrigation.

According to the press release, Singh will be joined at WSU by his wife Shikha, herself a soil scientist who will start work at WSU’s Wilke Research and Extension Farm near Davenport, where she will research the effects of crop rotation on yields, soil health and farm profitability.