After an early morning high school football practice, Alex Mangialardi went to his family’s farm in Shelby with one instruction from his dad: chop out the pigweeds.

Fast forward a few years, and Mangialardi, now a doctoral candidate at Mississippi State University, is still combating weeds, but in a more scientific way.  He is focused on managing Palmer amaranth, also known as pigweed, a prolific weed that plagues the South.

Genetic modifications have helped control the weed, so while Mangialardi’s days of handpicking weeds are over, he continues to fight weeds through his agronomy studies, specializing in weed science. His mentor, Jason Bond, a weed scientist with the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station and MSU research/extension plant and soil sciences professor at the Delta Research and Extension Center in Stoneville, has been instrumental in his development.

Bond highlights the uniqueness of Mangialardi’s experience, noting that he will earn all three of his degrees from MSU.

“In any operation, there’s a progression from being not quite aware of everything that’s going on to being aware of everything, and Alex has worked through all those steps, and now he can do anything I can do, and I think that’s the way that’s supposed to work, particularly when you’ve finished two degrees in one place,” Bond said. “He is very effective and very capable.”

Mangialardi’s educational journey began at Ole Miss, seeking a biology degree and hoping to work in healthcare, but after two years he returned to his roots…agriculture. He worked at the station in Stoneville over the summer, earning his bachelor’s degree in agronomy in 2019.

Under Bond’s mentorship, Mangialardi focused on controlling failed stands of corn and soybean and received his master’s degree from MSU in 2022. Now, as he works toward his third MSU degree, hoping for a May 2025 graduation, he’s focused on finding solutions to control Palmer amaranth without the common herbicide paraquat.

Preliminary findings are promising, with other products working efficiently when used correctly. While his background on the family farm instilled unique skills, the intricacies of agricultural research were new to him.

“When I first began, I didn’t realize everything that goes into growing a crop on a day-to-day basis,” he said. “I didn’t realize all the little tasks that go into research. That was probably the biggest thing for me: all the tedious work that goes into it.”

Managing those nuances makes Mangialardi an asset to MSU’s weed science program, Bond said.

“A weed science program is not crop specific, so you learn how to grow all those crops,” Bond said. “If you've never been around cotton, you will learn something about growing cotton, because in weed science, everything happens at the first part of the year, so you’ll watch all the stages of the plant.”

For Mangialardi, his education and future career tie back to his days helping his family.

“Jason does a good job building programs for growers, and I just hope my work will help people like my dad and other growers who need problem solvers,” Mangialardi said.