IRVINE, Calif. — In the most recent episode of Voices of the Valley, the podcast hosted by Dennis Donohue, the Director of Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology, and Candace Wilson, CEO of GreenVenus, entrepreneur Pam Marrone, founder of Marrone Bio Innovations, discusses why everyone wants to go into biologicals these days for pest management – and what companies need to do to succeed.

With more than 500 patents to her name, Marrone says that there is both a science and an art to developing a biopesticide.

“You can grow a microbe in different ways, with different recipes, like when you’re cooking, or when you’re fermenting wine or beer in a big vat,” she says. “What we do…is to characterize the microbes we’re making and make sure every batch we make has a specific level of those compounds.”

As the same time, innovating these “killer cocktails” for innovation’s sake doesn’t make sense unless it results in satisfied stakeholders, Marrone says.

“One of the things that’s really critical is always talking to our customers, talking to growers and talking to our channel partners, the distributors that then sell to the growers,” she says. “We’ve had to do a lot of pull through at the grower level, so doing demonstrations on the farm…that’s really the best way we’ve been able to create adoption.”

Voices of the Valley is produced by Western Growers and its Center for Innovation & Technology.

–Western Growers