The potato as a language of success

Tübinger Bio-Tech-Company Sourcon-Padena has returned to the tuber.

It can take time until biological research becomes work-places. Bio-technics needn’t be glamorous either. Sometimes it’s all about the common potato.

Tübingen. In the middle of an exciting phase when many bio-technology-companies started up, the Sourcon-Padena company was also founded. Natural resources were to be won from soil fungi and bacteria for medication development. Since 2001, in Hechinger Street, Derendinger Steinlachwasen, suitable candidates for e.g. cancer medication were searched for. The company’s objective was a million-turnover and 20 new jobs within a few years.

Seven years later the result was three full-time and two part-time jobs). The current Managing Director Wolfgang Vogt doesn’t talk about natural resources for the pharmacy industry anymore. „I speak potato.“

The 41 year old expresses what Sourcon-Padena is mainly busy with: a bacterium, that protects potato plant roots from fungal disease, makes them generally more resistant and produces large, strong, uniform sized tubers. With this, the company goes back to its source twice over. It was Vogt, who as a PhD student in Stuttgart-Hohenheim, discovered the healing bacterium that stems from the genus Pseudomonas. It occurs naturally in lettuce plant roots. Vogt stayed on until his company Padena, founded for marketing purposes, merged with Sourcon, a company that searched for active components. Sourcon was supposed to attract risk-capital and Padena gain initial turnover with marketable produce. Then Vogt left and worked for almost seven years at „m-phasys“, also a young start-up company from Weststadt industrial estate ‘Unter dem Holz’, Tübingen, they wanted to learn more about the three-dimensional structure of interesting receptore molecules, until the company’s finance-providers turned off the money supply.

In 2006, Vogt went back to the tuber. Sourcon-Padena still existed, even though the risk-financer’s own money soon became tight. It saved the day when the Herrenberger Buck Chemie, a company that makes their turnover with sanitary chemicals came on board. Once again, Vogt concentrated completely on the proven to be effective bacterial agent for potatoes used in many field trials. Since this year, Sourcon-Padena has been authorized for the first time as a plant protection product for the Netherlands, an important European potato market. Clever distribution partners, internationally distribute the powder-form product that is also authorized as a natural soil component for bio-cultivation.

Soon there will be products in garden markets.

„This makes us a completely new company.” The Sourcon-branch hardly exists anymore. One or two orders for biochemicals still come in, but the economic opportunity is with the bacterial product named Proradix. Sourcon-Padena’s especially trademarked technique lies in stabilizing the delicate bacterium in powder form.

If the powder is dissolved in water, the tubers can be immersed in it. When the roots germinate it populates the root surface like a protective shield. The bacterium treatment also has a positive effect on lawn seeds. The lawn grows healthier and lusher. If everything goes the way Vogt envisages, in 2009 the company could operate without a finance-boost from Herrenberg for the first time. By then, lawn seeds treated with Proradix should be available in local garden markets. With other vegetables, the company’s-own Pseudomonas shows positive effects with cucumber, paprika and tomatoes. On the potato of all places, a bacterium has now been found from the same genus that after first trials on lettuce enfolded effective biological protection. With that, perhaps Vogt can carry on with his exciting tales about discoveries and the subsequent commercial success.

“Tübinger Nachrichten” 15.12.2008