The Controlled Environment Agriculture Innovation Center is a joint project between Virginia Tech, the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR), and industry that is working to advance the controlled environment agriculture (CEA) sector in Virginia, the U.S., and internationally through leveraging our collective resources, skills, and expertise by addressing the needs of the industry with our research, education, and extension programs.

The CEA Innovation Center team is exploring a wide range of research topics.  Among them:  micro-tomatoes, microgreen production, edible flowers,  dill & fennel, pathogen management in edible CEA crop production, microbial biostimulant application in CEA production and more.

The vision of the CEA Innovation Center is to build meaningful industry and academic collaborations, conduct outstanding research to address knowledge gaps, develop and provide excellent training materials and programs, provide undergraduate and graduate student education, and support entrepreneurs in the controlled environment agriculture sector. It was established in 2019 to leverage technology and research to accelerate advancements in the growing CEA industry