Maro Sondahl
July 29, 1943 - January 10, 2005

Maro Sondahl, who received his Ph.D. in developmental biology at Ohio State University in 1978, made important contributions to his field with his pioneering work on the tissue culture of various tropical crops. Sondahl developed the first protocol for somatic embryogenesis of coffee in the late 1970s, followed by work with maize, oil palm and roses during the 1980s. Also, he was a pioneer in cocoa tissue culture work. In the 1980s, his team at the DNA Plant Technology Corporation (Cinnaminson, NJ), developed the first protocols to obtain cocoa somatic embryos from sporophytic tissues (nucellus and floral parts). He was granted a U.S. patent for somatic embryogenesis and plant regeneration of cocoa in 1994.

Sondahl did his undergraduate work at the Brazilian Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro and received a Masters degree from the Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture of the University of Sao Paulo. He began his scientific career in 1970 as a researcher at the Agronomic Institute of Campinas, a state-owned research center in Sao Paulo, where he worked mainly with coffee physiology. After earning his Ph.D. from Ohio State, he returned to the Institute, where he became the chairman of the Department of Plant Genetics, and later the Director of the Biology Division.

He started his own company, Fitolink, in 1993 and in 1997, started Bionova, doing work with commercial micropropagation of sugarcane, banana, and pineapple.

During his career, Sondahl successfully combined science, publishing articles important to his field, with the business-oriented perspective of the entrepreneur. Sondahl's great sense of humor is fondly remembered by his friends and colleagues. Although he was born in Brazil his father's family was originally from Iceland while his mother's family was of Portuguese background and he had served as an Honorary Consul for Iceland in Curitiba, Brazil since 2000. His wife, Dr. Clemencia Noriega, continues to run their business in Brazil.

Adapted from Ingenic Newsletter
Written by Antonio Figueira

Article from BioLink (PDF)

Article from The Vector (PDF)

A page from Maro Sondahl's Ph.D. dissertation