Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION – In a study recently reported in the journal BMC Genomics, researchers at Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, working with collaborators in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the Texas AgriLife Genomics and Bioinformatics Center, have sequenced the first Quarter Horse genome – helping unlock the secrets of what makes this breed so unique.

Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION, Texas — An estimated 5.6 million trees that once shaded homes, streets and parks in communities across Texas now are dead as a result of last year’s unrelenting drought.  

Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION – Mother Nature sent many Texas farmers an early Valentine’s Day card in the form of rain the last week.

Texas Business reports: Texas has been ranked the top exporting state in 2011 for the 10th year in a row, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Texas Business reports:  COLLEGE STATION – Recent rains greatly improved soil-moisture levels in many parts of the state, according to reports from Texas AgriLife Extension Service county agents.

Texas Business reports: Texas factory activity increased in January, according to business executives responding to the Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey. The production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, rose from 0.2 to 5.8, suggesting growth resumed this month.

Texas Business reports:  COLLEGE STATION – Thanks to rains, more of Texas transitioned from exceptional to extreme drought, or from severe to moderate, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Texas Business reports:  FORT WORTH—American Eagle Airlines, the regional affiliate of American Airlines, is replacing all of its ATR turboprop aircraft operating from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Texas Business reports:  BRYAN—Skanska USA Building and BOKA Powell LLC completed a 130,000-square-foot, clinical building on the Texas A&M Health Science Center Bryan campus.

 Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION – Many areas received rain, but the general consensus from weekly reports by Texas AgriLife Extension Service county agents was that more is needed to keep wheat and winter pastures going.

Texas Business reports:  COLLEGE STATION—Like Old West cattle barons in a B-western, red imported fire ants are expanding their range and increasing their herds while laying wholesale waste to the range, according to an expert on the issue.

Texas Business reports:  HOUSTON—NASA's Johnson Space Center and Texas A&M University will sign an agreement Dec. 19 to begin the move of the primary space shuttle launch and landing trainer, the Shuttle Motion Simulator, to College Station.

Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION—As many as 500 million trees scattered across the Lone Star State have died this year as a result of the unrelenting drought, according to preliminary estimates from Texas Forest Service.

Texas Business reports:  COLLEGE STATION--Sales of existing single-family Texas homes in November were up 9 percent from a year ago, according to the most recent Multiple Listing Services (MLS) data compiled by the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. 

A dam in Central Texas' Blanco State Park, one of 7,500 in the state, the highest total in the U.S. Photo courtesy of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

AUSTIN – Possum Kingdom Lake, northwest of Fort Worth, was created when the Morris Shepard Dam was built in 1938 to harness the Brazos River. It was the first water-supply reservoir in the state. Once a major hydroelectric generating facility, the dam became the first to surrender its operating license in Texas in 2007, when turbines that generated an estimated 22,500 kilowatts of electricity were disabled. There’s no talk of taking down the dam and freeing the river, though. Unlike the United States in general, drought-prone Texas is keeping the dams it has.

Texas Business reports:  HOUSTON—McCarthy Building Companies Inc., a Texas builder for 30 years, won the $24.9 million Wellborn Road Grade Separations project, marking McCarthy’s first project with The Texas A&M University System.

Texas Business reports: Amid reports of the nation’s weak economic recovery, high unemployment and slow job growth, attention has turned to Texas, the only large state on track to surpass its prerecession peak employment by year-end, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. 

Texas Business Reports:  The U.S. economy entered a financial-market-driven recession in December 2007 from which it has yet to fully recover. The boom of the mid-2000s has been replaced with a stubborn national reality of high unemployment and sluggish output growth, with no clear indication when economic activity will return to more normal levels, according to Jason Saving of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. 

Texas Business reports:  COLLEGE STATION – A new grain-testing program administered by the Office of the Texas State Chemist will bring consistency to the marketplace in light of aflatoxin issues over the past few years, according to its director.