Biocontrols for the future, with Pam Marrone

Hi friends, this is John. I'm passionate about developing regenerative agriculture systems that improve soil health, produce crops that are completely resistant to diseases and insects, and produce food of such an exceptional quality that we can have a legitimate conversation about growing food as medicine. I've been fortunate to meet many people with incredible knowledge and information about soil and plant systems. However, much of this knowledge and information is scattered all over the place. There are many incredible stories and a lot of knowledge that have not been widely shared. I founded Advancing eco Agriculture in 2006 to bring this knowledge together in a more coherent fashion and incorporate it into products and growing systems that growers can easily put into practice. It's my personal mission to have these regenerative agriculture systems become the mainstream globally, the status quo against which all other growing systems are compared to. To achieve this goal, I want to share the knowledge that we have learned in the last decade and make it available to everyone. These concepts and principles about regenerative systems can be applied anywhere and when they're properly applied, they will increase farm profitability and resilience to climate stress. If you have any questions, suggestions, comments or topics of ideas that you would like for me to discuss, please connect on social media or email me. JohnGenerativeAgriculturePodcast.com Be sure to sign up for our email list@regenerativeagriculturepodcast.com Hope you enjoy and thank you for listening. Hi friends, I'm here with Pam Marone, an exceptional entrepreneur who has done quite a bit of intriguing work in the area of biopesticides and biostimulants. Pam, you've had a very interesting pathway in life working with your degree at Cornell, working for Monsanto and Ed Entotech, your work at Agriquest, most recently at Marone Bioinnovations. You've had a fascinating pathway. I've found it very intriguing. Can you tell us a little bit about the journey that you've been on and what has brought you to the point that you are today and the things that you're working on?

Sure. I started from way back oh gosh, when I was a little girl growing up in rural Connecticut and I watched the gypsy moths ravage the trees and my father ended up using Bt bacillus thuringiensis, which was the first ever microbial bio insecticide commercialized and he was trying to save some a dogwood tree right outside the kitchen window and it was intriguing to me that there was this naturally occurring microbe that could control caterpillars and I was 7, 8, 9 years old when he was using that product. So I was determined to become an entomologist and then look for ways to control pests naturally. That was what I decided I was going to do. And so I started at Monsanto and had a very non traditional career there. I was hired to start up a unit looking for ways to control insects without the use of chemicals. And this was before that was right when the GMO stuff was happening. So I set up a natural product screening where we screened over 150,000 microorganisms looking for natural products. And they cut that program, of course, and ended up in shifting me to work on GMOs. And I got a call from a Danish company I'd never heard of, Novo Nordisk, who said they wanted me to start up a company in the United States somewhere, which we ended up, Davis, California, screening microbes, looking for natural products. And I was like, whoa, I get to continue what I really love to do. I fell in love with screening for natural products and looking for for natural products for controlling pests. So moved to Davis and then my group screen meaning isolated and discovered and tested against pests, another 55,000 microbes. And then Novo Nordisk decided to sell us. Just when we were starting to really get some headway, they sold us to our largest competitor, which is now Valent Biosciences. And I left and started up agriQuest in in 1995. And then we screened another 22,000 microbes, came up with a line of bio fungicides which are now very well known, Serenade and Sonata, and then started this one in 2006. And the idea with this company was to find microbes and plant extracts across the full range of grower needs. So not just fungicides, but also insect control, nematode control, plant health and stress reduction, and ultimately weed control. And weed control has been the toughest, but we're working on it and making headway. So that's the nature of my career. And yet it's unique in starting up companies and being able to follow bio pesticides biocontrol all the way through.

Pam, you described some very memorable moments. Find it very intriguing where we get inspiration for our life's work. And so one of the questions that I have for you is throughout your pathway, what have been some of the memorable moments when you look back, what are some of the things that really stand out to you that were unexpected? That came as a surprise.

Well, certainly each time I started with the RD groups, we had started screening the number of things we found that were pesticidal was amazing and yet there were so few. If you look at the numbers, only 15% of pesticides are derived from natural sources, but more than 50% of your drugs. So each time we found all these discoveries and said, wow, the natural world is full of these things, but why have so few made it to market? And so each time set up these groups, what we found was that you can find a needle in a haystack. Certainly you can search the world, but as you gain knowledge over time, you can find. What's really interesting was that you can actually see patterns in nature. So like, where can you find a microorganism that kills insects versus a microorganism that kills plant diseases? Well, they're interestingly different sources. So we found that finding an insecticidal microbe you had a higher chance if you looked like in conifer litter under conifer trees or rotting stumps. Whereas with looking for fungicidal microbes, dry creek beds were really good sources. Also isolating from the surface of the plant or the roots. As you might expect, there's these patterns in nature that you can sort out over time as you become expert in.

These things, the conversation has really shifted around bio controls and biostimulants and just the plant microbiome in general. Even 10 years ago in mainstream agriculture, there was, at least in my observation, experience, very little dialogue around a plant microbiome. And today that conversation has dramatically shifted where there's a lot of discussion in the areas of biostimulants and biocontrol. Something that you've been leading in for your entire career.

Yeah, it's remarkable that there's been a shift now and it's very exciting to see because the basis for organic farming, as you know, is a healthy soil equals a healthy plant. So organic farmers have had the focus on microbial biodiversity in the soil and healthy soil for a long time. But now there's healthy soil initiatives for conventional farmers, which is great to see because then that leads to a healthier plant if you have a healthier soil, regardless of whether you're organic or conventional. And so I, yes, I was way ahead of my time, but now it's interesting to see that this is becoming mainstream. I was just at a Rockefeller funded and OECD funded think tank in Italy two weeks ago and we had the top researchers in the microbiome for plants and natural products researchers there giving their talks about what they've learned. And now with the modern tools of genomics and also your Molecular tools, gene editing and so forth. You can find out much faster what's happening with the microbiome on the plant and also what plants are producing in terms of natural products. So you can sort out better what's happening in the soil and on the plant. It's not easy because there was one researcher who's found that the microbiome on the roots changed depending on whether the land was wheat was irrigated or not. And they found different microbes. Shifting from. You could actually shift the microbes depending on whether you irrigated or not. And then when you were in the transition of irrigating from dry land to irrigation, you changed the. You had a shift sort of in between microbiomes. So while these modern tools of molecular biology and such are really helping, there's still a lot of complex patterns in nature that we don't understand, which we will understand more and more over time.

I think the comment that you just made around shifting the microbiome is very relevant to a conversation which is gaining a lot more awareness is the desire to create or develop a disease suppressive soil and understanding that if we really want to develop a disease suppressive soil, microbial community and soil microbiome, then that's really a conversation about shifting the soil environment and the macro environment.

It is. And you know this researcher, her name is Linda Tamashow and she's a USDA researcher in Pullman, Washington. She studied the suppressive soil of wheat over time and why in some fields take all disease declines, but it was a long term shift, so it didn't happen overnight. And interestingly, everyone assumes that it's a cocktail of microbes or a consortium of microbes that causes the suppressive soil. In her case, she found that it actually was one natural compound that was excreted by the taxonomic group of microbes that was causing the reduction in take all really was. The primary effect was one single metabolite. So there are these things, these rules. Now I'm hearing farmers say, well, I got to have a consortia to have the suppressive soil. And she found that wasn't necessarily true. So interestingly, there could be a dominant player or there could be a consortia. So again, no rules really apply yet. We're still learning about this.

You mentioned a moment ago that 50% of pharmaceutical drugs are bioderived, if I understood you correctly, right, and that a much smaller percentage of the agricultural pesticides and agricultural chemicals are bioderived. One of the questions that I sometimes hear is growers are asking the Question, what are the systemic advantages or what are the advantages to the overall ecosystem of using biocontrols as compared to using synthetic, pharmaceutical grade or pharmaceutical quality pesticides?

Well, one thing is that the, the bio pesticides or bio control microorganisms or extracts of plants tend to be more biodegradable. So they break down much more quickly. And because you can't hook synthetic groups to them, so you're a lot of modern chemicals, you can make them more persistent by hooking on bromines or you know, halogenate halogen compounds. And so one of the advantages and also disadvantages biodegradability. But that is an advantage and also so they don't affect the existing microbiome as much or also the beneficial organisms on the plant. You know, honeybees, lacewings, lady beetles, predatory mites, most biologicals are generally non toxic or low risk to your non target organisms. So for in terms of developing a system, a holistic system, that's really a benefit. Also because of the complex modes of action of most biologicals, you don't have the resistance developing. Most modern chemicals today have a single site of action. The pests and pathogens can develop or weeds can develop quite quickly. And that's not the case with 99% of the biologicals. There's only a couple cases globally in 70 years where pests have developed resistance to biological pesticides. So that durability, sustainability. The other thing is that biologicals, whether it be a biopesticide or biostimulant, are generally produced with agricultural raw materials. So for example, our products are made in fermentation. So we're taking, we put soy flour in the media and we, when we make the microbe and other raw natural raw materials. So, so, and then our waste is also all biodegradable natural waste product from the agricultural raw materials. So the whole process of making the product is I would say sustainable in terms of the definition because of its ingredients and biodegradability.

I think one of the key pieces that we are beginning to understand better is the need to develop whole farm systems. And I know that many, many growers are expressing a strong desire to develop a cropping system where they have a reduced dependency on pesticides. And we have a challenge of course, on the research side in terms of product validation, etc. Where research is primarily focused on single factor analysis rather than a multi factor analysis or systems analysis. What hurdles have you encountered with the adoption or the validation of biocontrols in that research context?

This is such a timely Topic question you just asked. I've had a lot of discussion over this over the last three months and this was a keen topic of the think tank. I was in Italy. It's come up when talking to regulators when there's regulatory action or court action to remove a chemical pesticide. And then indeed I was down with one of the largest citrus growers in Florida recently talking about sustainable solutions for controlling citrus greening and Asian citrus psyllid. And that can certainly be applied to California where we're getting some outbreaks of that. And everyone in these conversations agreed with what you just said. And that is university research is very reductionist. It's single factor. So you'll test one single biological against the chemical program, it might even be chemical cocktail, whereas you're testing a single biological against that and you're not looking at the whole system or developing a whole IPM program. And the farmers are saying there's no longer silver bullets anymore, there's no silver bullet for replacing methyl bromide. The interim solutions, the chemical fumigants are just that interim. They're going to be restricted over time. The same with Asian citrus psyllid. There's no single bullet. So why is the funding going more towards either very long term basic research or single factor research instead of whole system research? There needs to be funding from the various agencies, whether it's usda, NIFA or where else, to fund on farm holistic IPM programs. And that's where the gap is missing because who's around to actually develop a multi factor system where you're implementing all the tools? It's cultural, it's variety selection, it's soil health, it's other cultural tools enhancing your biologicals or multiple, it might not just be one chemical but multiple solutions. And so. But who's doing that and is there money for it?

I think you're absolutely right, is that we need to be doing that because the reality is that is how natural ecosystems work. That's how farmers are forced to work. And so that's right. In order for research to be applicable, it really needs to be multifactorial.

That's right, that's right. And that's. And that's where there's a big gap. And I'm increasingly hearing that from farmers over and over and over again. We need multi factor solutions on the farm in a holistic system. And while it's nice to look at insecticide fungicide reports and see, you know, the single factor efficacy trials from the land grant institutions, I need more than that because the silver bullets, you can't, you can't use them as silver bullets anymore. You'll get resistance. Some of them are restricted already, regulatory wise, so you can't use them as much. You have limits on the number of sprays you can use. So how are these going to be incorporated in enhancing my beneficials, improving my soil health? Down in the citrus talking to the large grower, there were definite differences and tolerances of the different citrus varieties to the citrus greening. And that's where it starts.

Pam, you've helped found or a leading founder of the Bioproducts Industry alliance, and we spoke a moment ago about the shifting discussion and conversation that is happening in the agriculture space around biocontrols. In the conversations that I have with growers, I see many growers have a strong desire for biocontrols. Agronomists want to understand how to use them better. And then we of course historically have had some regulatory challenges getting products to be approved in the marketplace. One of the questions that I know many listeners have a strong interest in is where's the future? How do you see the use of biocontrols and biopesticides evolving in the future as compared to industry development of pharmaceutical quality pesticides?

Well, the market is growing faster for biologicals than for chemicals. So the chemical pesticide market is relatively flat single digit growth, whereas biologicals is growing between 15 and 20%. So clearly something is happening. And what's happening, both organic and conventional growers are adopting these at a more rapid rate and they're learning how to use them better. But that's the key, is first of all, awareness. Our surveys show that a lot of farmers still are completely unaware of the category and unaware of the products available. Number two is how to use them because the modes of action of these products are unique and often very different from chemicals. It is a higher education and it's not do they work? It's how to make them work and how to make them work in integrated programs. Going back to that single factor analysis, you'll see reams of data from university researchers showing a biopesticide against the best cocktail of chemicals. And then maybe it's not quite as good so it doesn't get used. But then that's such a shame because when it's integrated into a program, it might be a rotation or a tank mixture, then the biologicals will make the whole program better. So it's really understanding how to use and that is a gap we see. Also who's doing that educational piece? So it falls to the companies like ours. But really there needs to be a lot more education. It is changing at the land grants as some of the older researchers retire and new ones come in and they're generally more open to really learning how to use these products and really helping the growers learn how to use them. Cornell is a shining example. I was at the Geneva Research Farm this summer now called Cornell Agritech, and there's a professor, Dr. Cox, who said, I think I'm going to be able to develop an all biological system for controlling fire blight that works just as well as antibiotics and copper, which are both undesirable from the environmental standpoint.

Wow.

So you're seeing that generational change in being able to help the farmer understand how to integrate these and use them, which is how they're best used.

Pam this next question is a question that I've asked many of the guests who join me here on the podcast with many intriguing responses. What is something that you believe to be true about modern agriculture that is perhaps different from the mainstream viewpoint?

She pauses. Well, there may be a belief that you always will need to use chemicals in every case and ultimately the way you look at agriculture today is dominated by chemicals and then you dial in biologicals only when needed. What you can see in the future is that you rely on this holistic system. We're talking about integrating all the cultural tools, a true ipm. You incorporate all the cultural tools, plant health, soil health, biologicals, and then you use chemicals only when needed. So you turn it, you flip it. I think that there's already a model system for that. So when Azenfos methyl guthion was banned, restricted for controlling coddling moth in apples, pears and nuts on the west coast here, it created a crisis and a consortium of growers and University of California formed the Randall Island Project and they were determined to find alternate way to control codling moth. And there weren't any chemicals coming along at the time, so they relied on pheromones and ended up in a wide area pheromone program developing pheromones as the basis for controlling codling moth. And then you only dialed in chemicals when needed. So there's a perfect example of when you have public private partnership, you can develop a system, a sustainable system where it's robust, sustainably, long lasting and economically viable for the growers. There are many other examples where that could be done and so we are shifting to a more ecologically based program over time.

Pam, in the work that you have done, working with Ecosystems developing these biocontrol products. Over the last number of decades, what has been something that came as a pleasant surprise? What was unexpected?

The amazing diversity of things. You could find a solution to any problem in nature. So if you want to control a pest, you can find a natural solution to control that pest if you look enough and know where to look. So we actually did that here at Marone Bio. So we said we heard over and over and over again that the pathogens, plant disease causing pathogens, were constantly developing resistance to various downy mildews. And the growers said both the chemical and biological solutions for downy mildews, like lettuce, downy mildew, grape downy mildew, were just not good enough and they needed more tools. So we went and said, okay, we're going to find a solution specifically to oomycetes or the downy mildews. And we screened 16,000 microbes looking for a solution. And lo and behold, we had some candidates and we commercialized one. So there's just an example of. And we've done that multiple times. We did the same with, we're going to look for a solution for controlling this nematode. And so that can continue because of the amazing diversity of microorganisms. And also not just the microorganism itself, but the byproducts of the microorganisms. So the microorganisms produce compounds that control pests and plant pathogens and even weeds. And the diversity of, just like penicillin comes from a mold. The diversity of those compounds is also in many ways just amazing. And I don't know if it was unexpected, but it is amazing. We keep finding novel compounds that are new and never known and not discovered before. Same we found several new species of bacteria. And so I think there's just so much more out there. We're just in the very early stages of harnessing the natural world out there. Both the plant natural products, microorganisms and the compounds they produce.

I find that perspective to be so intriguing. There's so much that we still don't know and yet we also have learned a lot. So there's obviously tremendous value and a lot of benefit in developing products such as you have been developing with various companies that growers can use. But there is also, I think we also have to ask the question, how much of these various microbes and the beneficial value they bring can we tap into simply by managing ecosystems?

Yep.

Can produce those same benefits and those same effects by managing our ecosystems rather than focusing on a single Product. What are your thoughts?

I do think that's the basis for a whole crop production system. That's where we ultimately will get to and that is the basis for organic agriculture. As you know, organic farmers use a lot fewer inputs and why they have a healthier ecosystem, more biodiversity, so the pests and diseases don't outbreak as much. But occasionally you're going to need some. So they do use tools. But ultimately, yes, as you enhance the soil, enhance the microbiome and understand what's going on, interactions with weather and soil type and crop variety, and it is complex. Ultimately you can develop, like I said before, a whole base of your system is ecologically based and then you only add inputs when you need them. And organic farmers, that, I mean that's the whole basis of organic farming philosophy sometimes not always practiced that way, but anyway, that is. And certainly conventional farmers are moving in that direction.

Pam, what is something that you wish all farmers knew?

What do I wish all farmers knew? I'm going to be very selfish in that one. I There's a lingering perception that biologicals are weaker than chemicals in performance and it's actually not true because when you incorporate them into the program, they can actually strengthen and enhance the entire pest management or crop production program. So I wish that growers would look at integrated programs instead of just single factor analysis. When it comes to looking at biologicals, I would like farmers to start from the basis that these products do work, but it's how to make them work rather than, oh, they're weaker.

Well, I can, I, I can certainly second that. And I can speak from experience on many different types of crops, many different types of operations where biologicals and biocontrols have been successful, where chemical controls were unsuccessful. So they have the capacity to be incredibly effective. I think partially because of the broad range of mode of actions. There are so many more modes of action than they're sometimes present with pesticides. And I think from my observation, my perspective, when they are used as a part of a management system, in many cases they can be equally or sometimes even more effective than their own pesticidal counterparts.

Yes. And that is the key when used as part of the management system. And that the problem is, as we said earlier, that the testing is done in a reductionist way rather than integrated as part of the management program. And so we have to encourage researchers or fund the research to go to the next step in the land grant system. So it's more like how the farmers use the products on the farm.

Pam, if you wanted to advise a grower or a farmer. Where to Get More information what resources or what books would you recommend to growers who want to learn more about biocontrols and biosimilars, the products that are available and how they might be able to use them?

Well, ATTRA is a good place, the association for Responsible Technology. They do have a lot of information and they do have a database where you can search and get info. IR4, which is housed at Rutgers, does have a searchable database, and the Bio Products Industry alliance has information on the website about these types of products. I have started a Bio Bites section on our website where I have cataloged a number of articles. I've written other people's articles on this topic as well as some of the previous podcasts I've done. So that's another resource.

Thanks for sharing those. And for those of you listening, we will link to the various resources that Pam has shared in the podcast description as well that you can follow those links very easily. Pam, what is a question that you wish I would have asked?

Well, we didn't talk about some of the other benefits of biological programs. We focused on ecologically based part of IT and whole systems approach. But there are other factors that can really be benefits. So for example, in tight times of immigrant farm labor, where some farmers I know are having a tough time getting workers, you want to manage your labor better and so you can spray in the morning and be back in the field with the biological products because of their safety level. So that's a real benefit. And then when a lot of farmers export and they export to foreign markets, and a lot of these foreign markets are not accepting the US levels of pesticide residues and going beyond the US levels and so have either none or lower levels. So biologicals you can spray and right at the end of the season and you don't leave any residues. The other thing I'll mention is that what we're seeing is that there's new technology in terms of sensors, software, robotics, drones, all kinds of technology, hardware and software, digital ag that's being applied to crop production and pest management so that there's going to be leaps and bounds made in understanding the microbiome and soil health and plant health. But at the same time there's going to be better ways to track pest populations through remote sensing, making it more efficient to be able to learn how to integrate biologicals and predict when you have to spray or not, modeling when a disease comes in or when a pest comes in. For example, I know that there's a postdoc at UC Davis, who was modeling the movement of Lygus from major crops. So when they cut alfalfa, that certainly makes sense that when the alfalfa is cut, the Lygus bugs don't have any place to go. So they then move into a crop nearby and then they. They devastate, whether it's strawberries or peppers or what have you. So there's going to be a lot more things happening where growers are going to be able to have a lot more tools to be able to predict pest populations and what's actually happening on the farm. So you'll be able to have little video systems to watch the insect aphids right out in the farm, and digital imaging where, you know, after a certain crop production method, you'll be able to see whether what you're doing is enhancing the. You don't have to wait for the whole season and then measure yield. You'll be able to see it through imaging much sooner. There's a company called Ag Shift that is using artificial intelligence to develop an iPhone app where you can just snap a photo of your crop, the actual fruit or nut, and then it will tell you the quality of that right on the fly instead of having to bring it back to the lab and count the number and measure them and weigh them. So it's just at the very early stages of the marriage of biology and other technology. So it's a very exciting time to be in agriculture and a really great time to be a farmer, I think, and a great time to be an entrepreneur. So if you're a young person coming out of school and you're wondering what to do, there's more opportunities to actually solve problems by starting up a company and being entrepreneur than ever before.

I completely agree with that. It is a very exciting time to be in agriculture. There is a rapidly growing understanding of all of the ecosystem interactions. We are able to make correlations and links that we haven't been able to before.

I know that one of the pieces.

I find personally very fulfilling is being able to predict disease and insect susceptibility based on a planet's nutritional profile, which is something that we've been working with and so completely agree. Very exciting technology that is emerging on many different fronts. And I believe that agriculture, food and crop production is going to look fundamentally different in 15 years from now. To a point that you made earlier. I agree that nutritional solutions and bio controls, biostimulants will be the first tools of choice, and pesticides and synthetic fertilizers will be applied on an as needed, where needed basis, and we'll have the tools to be able to manage and measure that very accurately and very well in the future.

Yep, I think that's where we're going and it's my dream of seeing ecologically based agriculture be the dominant way we farm. It's exciting. I wish I were younger. I could start up three more companies because I think it will take about 15 years, but that's the exciting future we see.

Very good times, Pam. Thank you very much for joining us and for sharing your thoughts with our growers and our audience, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.

Thank you.

John this podcast was brought to you by a great company that I work for, AEA Advancing Eco Agriculture, the leader in regenerative agriculture since 2006. At AEA, we believe in challenging the status quo to find more profitable and regenerative ways to grow crops. We believe that healthy plants are resistant to pests and disease and that to grow healthy plants we must first think differently. About agriculture, about empowering life instead of suppressing life, about regeneration versus degeneration. To achieve this, we formulate and sell products that help growers produce higher quality yield and make more money with less risk. Thank you for listening.