When we last shared the story of Chesapeake native and REaKTOR technology innovation center company founder William Layton, and his pioneering company Agria, it was a celebration of possibility; a local founder reimagining agriculture with a “beyond organic” growing system. A few short weeks later, that story has sprouted new life.
Agria has now expanded its footprint to the classrooms and labs of Roanoke College, where students in Dr. Dorothy Poli’s Plant Anatomy and Physiology course are conducting live studies using the Agria system. The early results? Students report growth rates between 350% and 700% more than traditional agriculture!
More importantly, Layton and his team are cultivating something even more powerful: curiosity.
“The students are knocking it out of the park,” Layton wrote recently on LinkedIn.
For Layton, a bricklayer-turned-innovator, the Roanoke College partnership represents more than a scientific validation. It’s a proof point that Virginia’s innovation story is expanding, from the coast to the mountains, from the lab to the classroom.
What’s unfolding with Agria is cross-regional collaboration that creates pathways for experimentation and empowering the next generation to learn through doing.
That students at Roanoke College are now hands-on with Agria’s agricultural system is exactly the kind of intrastate innovation loop Virginia needs more of. It’s where research, entrepreneurship, and education meet, and where future founders can catch a first glimpse of what’s possible when ideas leave the whiteboard and take root in the real world.
Layton’s vision for Agria extends far beyond a single crop or a single lab. His goal, as he put it, is simple but bold: “To teach Agria in every college around the world.”
And why not? What began as a curiosity is now showing results in a university greenhouse in Roanoke; proof that big ideas can grow anywhere.
That’s the magic of innovation in Virginia: it starts with a spark, and before long, it grows roots across the Commonwealth.
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