In 1981, with his wife, Jane, and a technology partner in Europe, Dr. Sutula founded Agdia, Inc., Elkhart, Indiana, to develop and provide reliable and practical diagnostics for the detection of plant pathogens.
2/ With two competing companies in Europe, Inotech, Basil, Switzerland and Boehringer Mannheim, Germany, Dr. Sutula pioneered the concept of "reagent sets"—matched, quality-controlled antibodies and antibody-enzyme conjugates that can be used to prepare and perform one's own test.
Agdia currently offers more than 200 tests that use several technologies, such as ELISA, Recombinase Polymerase Amplification (RPA), Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), nucleic acid hybridization, immunochromatography, and Immunofluorescence assay (IFA), to detect viruses, viroids, bacteria, fungi, mycoplasma, insects, plant hormones, and proteins in conventional and genetically modified crops (GMO).
He developed international sales and helped to establish Agdia-Biofords, French company based in Genopole Évry, in charge of product distribution in Europe, Africa and Middle East.
Dr. Sutula's vision was to make research on detecting plant pathogens available to many persons in worldwide agriculture and to package this technology into easy-to-perform, affordable tests.
Sutula, Chester Louis, Structure, molecular orientation and mechanically induced reorientation of molecules in multimolecular films of long-chain n-hydrocarbon derivatives, 155 (1959) 1. van Kretschmar, J.
B., Bailey W. D., Arellano, C., Thompson, G. D., Sutula, C. L., Roe, R. M., Feeding disruption tests for monitoring the frequency of larval lepidopteran resistance to Cry1Ac, Cry1F, and Cry1Ab, Crop Prot.
Roe, R. M., W. D. Bailey, W. D., Gould, F., Sorenson, C. E., Kennedy, G. G., Bacheler, J. S., Rose, R. Hodgson, L. E., Sutula, C. L., Detection of resistant insects and IPM, Emerging technologies for integrated pest management concepts, research and implementation.
Zeng, F., Ramaswamy, S. B., Luttrell, R. G., Reed, J., Parker, C. D., Stewart, S., Harris, A., Knighten, K., Robbins, J., Xia, J. Q., Sutula, C. L., Comparison of monoclonal antibody and laboratory rearing techniques to identify Heliothentinaen (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) eggs from Mississippi cotton fields, Environmental Entomology 28 (2): 275-281 (1999) 4.