Natural entrepreneur
Her dream is creating, selling biopesticides for organic farming
By Jim Downing - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, June 17, 2007
Story appeared in BUSINESS section, Page D1
Next time you see an organic tomato at half-again the price of a conventional one, blame weeds.
More than diseases or hungry insects, weeds account for the high cost of organic crops, farmers and industry experts say. Weeds crowd plants, steal nutrients and cut yields.
Conventional farmers can fight weeds with a menu of proven herbicides. But organic growers rely on hand labor, delicate plowing between rows, even spraying vinegar -- whatever they can come up with.
It all adds to the cost of that tomato in the store.
If the price comes down a few years from now, there's a a good chance Pam Marrone will have had something to do with it.
For 17 years, the Davis-based scientist and entrepreneur has scoured the world for the biopesticides made by microorganisms that live on plants and in the soil. Marrone concentrates these natural chemicals into products that fight weeds, insects and diseases and, ideally, cut the cost of growing organic crops.
With that vision, Marrone has built a string of three biopesticide companies in Davis: Entotech Inc., AgraQuest and now Marrone Organic Innovations. Her entrepreneurial achievement has won her a reputation as a leading innovator in the $600 million biopesticide industry.
Thomas Holtzer, a Colorado State University entomologist who co-directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Western regional pest management program, said Marrone has been a pioneer in turning the promise of biopesticides into money-making commercial operations.
"I just see what she's doing as so important -- getting that technology out there for people to use," he said. "I can't think of anybody that's done that at the level she has."
Marrone ties her passion for natural chemicals to a gypsy moth infestation at her home in rural Connecticut when she was 7.
"You could go into the woods some years, and you could actually hear the insects chewing," she said.
"I remember walking out into the forest with no leaves and thinking, 'Well, this is what I want to do -- I want to find ways to control these things.' "
Mixed with that memory of insect devastation is a picture of dead ladybugs and bees after her father, out of desperation, sprayed a powerful chemical to kill the moths on the dogwood in front of the kitchen window. Her mother, a committed organic gardener, put her foot down.
"She said, 'That's the first and last time you will ever use a chemical,' " Marrone said.
Marrone's father went back to what's known as Bt, an early and still-popular biopesticide. And Marrone, a first-grader, wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for information on careers in pest management.
She would go on to earn a Ph.D. in entomology at North Carolina State, chasing dreams of developing natural pest-killers.
But the early years of Marrone's career took her to what now seems an unlikely employer: Monsanto Corp., the St. Louis-based biotech and chemical giant that makes Roundup.
Beginning in 1983, Marrone contributed to Monsanto's early agricultural biotech program, which she saw as a chance to develop products that would control pests without using chemicals. She developed a way to raise corn rootworms in the laboratory, enabling company scientists to do the research that led to a blockbuster genetically modified variety of corn, engineered to produce chemicals toxic to the rootworm.
But as Monsanto intensified its focus on genetic engineering, Marrone realized she didn't want that technology to be her life's work. In 1990, she accepted an offer to lead the Danish corporation Novo Nordisk's new biopesticide venture in Davis, Entotech.
Five years later, Novo Nordisk sold the company, and Marrone set out on her own, founding AgraQuest with funding from family and friends.
She took no salary for the first two years as AgraQuest got off the ground. By September 2001, though, the company had a collection of promising products, including ones that kill fungus and molds, and Marrone was preparing for an $80 million stock offering.
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Making a 'green' pesticide
Davis scientist and entrepreneur Pam Marrone turns natural compounds into biopesticides for organic and conventional farming. Marrone is a leading innovator in the fast-growing industry, which now boasts annual sales of $600 million. Here's how she develops a weedkiller:
1. Marrone and her associates gather diseased or dying plants, as well as samples of soil from areas where plants would be expected to grow but don't. In these samples, they hope to find unusual microorganisms that impair plant growth.
2. In the laboratory, her team cultures the microorganisms found in the soil and analyzes the chemicals they produce.
3. A solution prepared from the microorganisms is sprayed on a common weed.
4. If the solution damages the plant, it's a candidate to be developed into a commercial herbicide.
5. Next, Marrone's team must develop ways to make the natural herbicide compounds in large volume at a competitive price, ensure that the brew is compatible with existing pesticide-spraying equipment used by farmers and check its effectiveness on test fields.
6. Finally, the product must be approved by state and federal pesticide regulators, as well as by the nonprofit Organic Materials Review Institute.
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Davis scientist and entrepreneur Pam Marrone
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