EOT 421 Plant Science Initiative: Seed2Grow With Adrian Percy

In this episode of Eye on the Triangle, we sit down with Dr. Adrian Percy, Executive Director of NC State’s Plant Science Initiative. Dr. Percy shares insights on Seed2Grow, an innovative program that bridges research, industry, and entrepreneurship to tackle today’s agricultural challenges. From supporting student innovation to strengthening global food security, Seed2Grow is helping turn groundbreaking plant science into real-world solutions.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Shradha Bhatia

Public Affairs Director (2025-2026)

What is Eye on the Triangle?

Eye on the Triangle is WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1/HD-2’s weekly public affairs programming with news, interviews, opinion, weather, sports, arts, music, events and issues that matter to NC State, Raleigh and the Triangle.

00:02
Shradha Bhatia
You are listening to Eye of the Triangle, WKNC's weekly public affairs program from the campus of North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Any views and opinions expressed during Eye of the Triangle do not represent NC State or student media. Welcome to the WKNC 88.1 FM. I'm your host, Shraddha Bhatia. And today we'll be talking with Dr. Adrian Percy, executive director of the NC State Plant Science Initiative about Seed2Grow, NC State's new ag Tech incubator program. We'll also hear from the public news service. This September is Infant Mortality Awareness Month, highlighting ongoing challenges here in North Carolina and also its Suicide Prevention Month. So. So in North Carolina, LGBTQ youth are at higher risk and local advocates are working to expand support and resources.

01:23
Shradha Bhatia
Today, I'm excited to be speaking to Dr. Adrian Percy, executive director of the NC State Plant Science Initiative about seed2grow, a new ag tech incubator, helping researchers bring their ideas from the lab to the marketplace. To start, could you please introduce yourself and share a bit about your journey?

01:42
Adrian Percy
Sure. So thank you first of all for having me on the show. It's great to be here. Yes. So as you heard, my name is Adrian Percy. I've been at NC State for four years. I actually had a long career industry prior to coming here and working in the agricultural sector, but then got the opportunity to come to NC State. And it has been an amazing four years and really happy to be in the position I'm in.

02:05
Shradha Bhatia
That's nice. So I did kind of like research about you, like, and what did you do? So I heard that you worked at Bayer and UPL before this and now you're the lead at NC psi. So how did those roles shape you for like the seed2grow program?

02:22
Adrian Percy
Yeah. So working at Bayer, I was, I had the privilege of working basically all over the world and seeing different agricultural systems in places like Brazil and China and India, Australia, New Zealand, many different places. And got somewhat of a feeling the fact that farmers across the world, say, actually face many similar challenges. And at Bayer, we had the opportunity to develop individual products to help farmers. And then at UPL, which is an Indian based company, I also had that opportunity to do a very similar type of job that was more focused on Southeast Asia, particularly India, of course. But then coming to NC State, you know, I realized North Carolina farmers have also some very similar issues than what we're seeing in other parts of the world.

03:11
Adrian Percy
And of course, as a land Grant University, NC State has a big focus on those growers on those stakeholders across the state. And I just saw it as an opportunity to carry on the type of work that I was doing in these international companies, but to have really much more of a focused effort where we could actually see, you know, every day, because we meet with farmers all the time, we can actually see the benefit of the research that we're doing.

03:35
Shradha Bhatia
Oh, that's really interesting. And I've also known that you lived across like Europe and the U.S. so, like, what's the difference that you noticed how these regions across, like, approach agriculture, like, and innovation and like commercialization.

03:53
Adrian Percy
Yeah. So I'm from the uk, as you might hear from my voice, not from North Carolina, but did work mostly in France and in Germany. I think, you know, there are many similarities. I would say some of the differences are in Europe, there's a really heavy focus on sustainability. The. And not to say that American farmers don't think about that or work on it, but it has become almost top of mind in Europe. A lot of the public policy, government policies driving farmers to use very sustainable practices, some of which aren't unfortunately very practical, but they're required to do that. So there's, there is that kind of very strong emphasis. I would say the other thing that differs between, say, the US and Europe is the size of the farms.

04:40
Adrian Percy
Not so much in North Carolina because we tend to have medium size and even smaller farms. But in Europe, farming and the rural societies and urban societies are becoming very much intermeshed. Now, I lived in a house where behind me there was a school and in front of me there was a farmer's field. You don't see that so much in America because, you know, of the increased landmass that we have. But what it meant, of course, was that people in the town, in the village where I live, were very conscious of what the farmers were doing and knew when they were spraying a chemical, for example, and didn't want that happening around a school, for example.

05:20
Adrian Percy
And so those kind of very interactive kind of situations that you get in those very kind of intermeshed communities are perhaps a little bit different from, see commonly in the US for sure.

05:34
Shradha Bhatia
Yeah. Because like, and the uk, like across Europe, they have a lot of land, right? For sure.

05:39
Adrian Percy
Yeah, we have land, but it's. There's also a lot of population. And you know, the uk, where I come from, is roughly the size of North Carolina, but we have at least four times more people in that, in that land mass. So, you know, farming and urban life, if you like, are very Much kind of close and have to fit together very interconnected. Yeah, yeah.

06:01
Shradha Bhatia
So and now we would like switch to like the more focus towards like the Seed2Grow program. So many researchers have like brilliant ideas but like struggle to move from like the lab bench to like the marketplace. So what barriers do you see often and how is like seed2Grow designed to bridge them?

06:23
Adrian Percy
Well, NC States, part of our mission is research and we have some excellent researchers. Translating research into a commercial product is not an easy journey and it takes a very unique skill set and actually a group of different skill sets where you have to understand the market that you're trying to introduce a product in. You have to understand the price point that you want to introduce this product. Will it actually add value to a farmer for instance, are they able to have a return on the investment that they need to make in that technology? Then you need to produce perhaps a sensor or something at scale. Again not something that's commonly done in a university research lab.

07:07
Adrian Percy
So what we basically try to do is help researchers who normally will have a great idea, they will have a great idea for a technology, but then we'll help them understand does that technology meet an unmet need? Can it be produced for instance at a scale at a cost which is attractive to a customer, in this case perhaps a farmer. And then can they actually take this journey where they have to maybe get investment from the outside in order to ramp up their operations? Can they form a team that will actually have a commercial focus rather than just a research focus?

07:45
Adrian Percy
What we try to DO through the Seed2Grow program is help faculty or students or postdocs in all of those different elements that you need to have in order to actually build a company that will one day have a product and be profitable.

08:02
Shradha Bhatia
And then the NCPSI emphasizes like more public private partnerships. So how do those partnerships practically like benefit startups? Startups and like seed2Grow?

08:15
Adrian Percy
Yeah. So we're very lucky to be on the edge of Research Triangle park here in Raleigh. And RTP has become a world leading hub for agricultural technology production. And that's because we have a lot of the large companies. I used to work here for Bayer, they're no longer here, they moved to St. Louis. But even outside of that, many big companies, Syngenta, bsf, they're major employers in the park. They have their North American headquarters here. They also have some of their global R and D here. So they are the foundation, if you like, for this agtech hub that we have here in the Triangle. But there's a lot of smaller companies, medium sized smaller companies, startups working in this field. We now have over 200 agtech companies in the region. So with that comes a lot of expertise, a lot of knowledge.

09:05
Adrian Percy
It gives us the opportunity to partner with those companies or with individuals in those companies who can help advise our companies and even partner with them, collaborate. Sometimes they hire our students, of course, but there's this real interconnectedness between what goes on in RTP and what happens here on campus. And that's a really important element of our whole program.

09:27
Shradha Bhatia
200.

09:28
Adrian Percy
That's a lot, a lot of companies. Yeah.

09:32
Shradha Bhatia
And some critics say that incubators risk becoming like silos. So, so how does Seed2Grow ensure startups stay connected to like real world grower needs and like market requirements?

09:46
Adrian Percy
That's a great question. So I'll answer that in two ways. So first of all, if I could take an example, we had a company that recently graduated from our program. They're called Hoofprint Biome. They're two former students from NC State. They have a technology that they believe will reduce methane emissions from livestock. At the same time, they'll increase the productivity of the livestock. So more meat, more milk. Now they worked across campus. They had a cow in animal sciences that they worked with. They worked out of the PSI building, they worked with our makerspace building sensor devices that would measure the amount of methane in the cow and so on and so forth. And so they really leveraged the ecosystem that we have here at NC State. So that's kind of the first point, as you say, about not being in a silo.

10:38
Adrian Percy
Actually this university has so many resources, sometimes too many to get your head around. But if you can access those in different parts of the university, you'll find a lot of people who are willing to support those types of efforts. The other thing, and I think you bring up a really important point about staying connected to your customer base, the farmer in this case or the livestock producer. And we do that through constant interactions with farmers. So we have a Farmer Advisory Council. These are farmers who sometimes have a connection to NC State, sometimes don't. But they believe in the mission that we have at the PSI and they help advise us on the research activities that we have and the types of technologies that we are developing. We also reach out to what we call commodity associations.

11:26
Adrian Percy
So in North Carolina we have around about 90 different crops which are being grown. Most of those have a commodity association that represents them. So there's the Sweet Potato Commission, there's the Corn Growers association, there's the Soybean Producers Association. They stay very close to individual farmers and understand the challenges that they face producing that particular crop. And they provide us with input, again, helping inform our research activities so that we're working on the right things and developing technologies that will be really useful to the farmer and user friendly as well. So not some machine or robot that they just can't use or that breaks down in the field because you have rain or whatever it may be, it's too hot, too cold. So really practical devices that will be useful on the farm.

12:15
Adrian Percy
And that's really how we avoid being in that kind of silo type mentality.

12:20
Shradha Bhatia
Yeah. Because like having those like individual associations, I feel like they're, they are like helping you a lot.

12:26
Adrian Percy
Yeah, they really help us. We actually bring a lot of them together. We, we had a large event last year where we brought around about 30 of these associations together. And it was very interesting because when we interrogated them and kind of teased out from them what are the issues that they see the farmers producing their particular crops have, many of them were overlapping. And so were able then to develop research programs that met the needs of multiple crops at the same time.

12:54
Shradha Bhatia
That's really interesting. Yeah. And then I have like a few more questions. So mentorship is like central through executives and residents. So what qualities do you look for in mentors and how do they balance encouragement with tough feedback?

13:11
Adrian Percy
Great question. I think any successful entrepreneur will recognizes the need for feedback and tough feedback. It's not helpful to have someone telling you all the time you're doing a great job when you're really not. It's a waste of time and it can lead you in the wrong direction and lead to really bad consequences. So I think one of the things we say about successful entrepreneurs is they're coachable, they listen, they want to understand, they want to adapt. And they will take the opinions of various different mentors and try to then path, you know, a way forward for themselves because sometimes they'll get conflicting advice.

13:54
Adrian Percy
But from the mentor side, we find there's a lot of former executives in rtp, people who've worked in big companies, small companies, people who have sometimes had failures, which is one of the best ways to learn, and who are willing to give their time. And that's the thing I find really amazing is that so many of these folks give their time. I know a lot of students that I've talked to and faculty are sometimes reluctant to ask for people's time and I don't think they already, they always understand that actually this is a very pleasurable thing. It's a very rewarding thing for these mentors to do. And they tell me all the time I wish I could do more of this. You know, it's one of the ways I give back.

14:37
Adrian Percy
It gives me most pleasure to be able to interact with a company or an entrepreneur or a student around a particular topic, give them the benefit of my experience. And sometimes they'll take it and sometimes they won't. But, but they really love the process. So, you know, I think if you have that opportunity, you should really take it.

14:54
Shradha Bhatia
Yeah. Because like, as a student I can like relate that I'm like very hesitant when I'm like asking for like mentorship or anything because, and sometimes if I would get like conflicting feedback so I just like wouldn't know what to like work around it. So like, do you have like any thoughts about that?

15:11
Adrian Percy
So I think having an honest relationship with your mentor, if someone says to you they're happy to do it, then take them at their word. You know, there's lots of ways they could get out of it without hurting your feelings if they wanted to. But if they see genuinely interested, then, you know, just go for it. But I think in terms of approaching people, just ask. I mean, you know, you can give them a little bit of an out in case they don't want to do it. But you know, I will often get emails or I'll have people meet with me and just ask. And you know, normally I will say yes. I won't say yes if I don't think I can help them, which sometimes may be the case. But if I feel I've got something, then I will say yes.

15:54
Adrian Percy
But I'll also advise them to get a whole range of mentors because again, I think the collective wisdom of a lot of people is better than having just one or two people who may lead you down the wrong path sometimes.

16:06
Shradha Bhatia
Yeah. And agtech often has long development timelines compared to software. So what strategies does seed2grow use to keep entrepreneurs resilient during that long run to the market?

16:22
Adrian Percy
Well, you're absolutely right. It can take an awful long time to bring a new biotechnology trait or a new type of sweet potato or a new crop protection product to market. It can take decades in fact. And so you do need to be very resilient and have a lot of patience. You know, we tend to break things down into stages. We see a lot of investors, in fact, are willing to invest at a very early stage in the development of some of these technologies. And they understand that there is a long lead time before they might hit the market and become profitable.

16:57
Adrian Percy
So I think recognizing that ag is different from some other sectors because there's a lot of regulatory oversight of our food, as there should be, which means that there's a lot of studies you have to do to show safety, and that takes a lot of money, a lot of time. So just understanding that we need to be patient is one thing, but I'd say the other side is we are developing a lot of software now. I think one of the untapped areas in agriculture is the use of digital science and the use of apps and devices which are driven by the Internet of things, which are driven by AI and by machine learning. And that's one of the things we're really focused on at the psi.

17:37
Adrian Percy
We're trying to work with our researchers and support them to develop what we call decision support tools which are useful for farmers to help them make decisions in their. In their production practices. And those can be developed really quickly. You know, it's months as opposed to decades. So, you know, we're trying to do both.

17:56
Shradha Bhatia
No, like, adding software into that would really help.

18:00
Adrian Percy
Yeah. I mean, they say now, you know, one of today's modern tractors is more complex than the lunar module in 1965, you know, and they are very complex. And, you know, farmers now are more and more using, you know, apps to collect weather data, make predictions, to understand, you know, how to treat their crops. We've got some researchers who are working on some really cool technology around early detection of diseases in the field. So, you know, today many farmers will go around and look at their fields to see if there's some disease or some. An insect they don't want in the field. But now with these detection devices, you can get, you know, an alert on your.

18:43
Adrian Percy
on your phone in the morning. To say, okay, you need to go treat your field because it needs more water or it has a bug or a disease that's going to cause you problems, so go do something. So that's kind of one of the breakthroughs that we're seeing now as, you know, digitalization takes over agriculture just like it's taken over the rest of our lives, you know.

19:09
Shradha Bhatia
And North Carolina has a rich agricultural landscape, as like you said. So how do you seed2grow contributing not only, like, globally, but also like local growers and like, rural communities here in the state.

19:22
Adrian Percy
Yeah. So North Carolina has an amazing agricultural heritage and current activities. It is the economic driver of our state. Over $110 billion in returns coming out of agriculture. So it's incredibly important. But farmers do face a lot of challenges. And you know, I mentioned about urbanization, you know, this kind of conflict sometimes between the urban community and the rural community. They need different types of technologies to overcome that. There's a lot of issues around labor, the cost of labor, the availability of labor. And so farmers are looking for automation in a lot of their activities. There's also a lot of effects of extreme climate. Climate change is real and it is occurring here in our fields. And farmers have to deal with long periods of drought followed by perhaps excessive quantities of rain or hurricanes, whatever it may be.

20:20
Adrian Percy
And so finding crops which are more resilient to those extremes of temperature is really important. You know, we had counties last year that had both state of emergencies for drought and then shortly afterwards for flooding. I mean, that is crazy to be, you know, hit from both sides, if you like, in the same place in one year. And, you know, a lot of those are rural counties that are growing these crops. And so we need to help farmers be more resilient in terms of those practices. And that's why I think we can add a lot of value.

20:53
Shradha Bhatia
Like hitting with the. Both drought and flood at the same time.

20:56
Adrian Percy
Yeah, it's.

20:57
Shradha Bhatia
It's too much. So. And with the climate change, like, and growing population there. Oh, wait, you just answered that. You just answered that.

21:08
Adrian Percy
Well, if you ask it again, maybe I'll answer it better in a better way.

21:12
Shradha Bhatia
So, like, with climate change and growing population pressures, there's urgency for, like, innovation. So how do you balance, like, encouraging bold ideas with, like, ensuring they're realistic and like, scalable?

21:25
Adrian Percy
Yeah, so, I mean, the global population is increasing, and of course that means we need more food. And also at the same time, we've got many countries around the world that are moving to a dietary system where they want more protein, they want more meat, which means more crops being produced to feed those animals. So there's a real strain on the demand side, but also on the supply side because of, you know, extreme climate conditions, which can really have an impact on crop productivity. So, you know, meeting those both at the same time is incredibly important. And, you know, that's where we can make a difference. And, you know, with the technologies that we're trying to develop can help make farmers more. More productive, but at the same time more resilient in the sense that their crops are protected. In a better way.

22:17
Adrian Percy
I'm not sure I answered your question there. Hopefully that was useful.

22:22
Shradha Bhatia
And finally, what's like, one piece of advice you would give to, like, young researchers or like, a student with an idea, but who isn't sure how to, like, take the first step?

22:34
Adrian Percy
So I would say two things. So first of all, and I know there's a lot of students across North Carolina State studying a lot of different things, one of the things we try to do is get students excited about the opportunities of agriculture. We have a lot of students from engineering in particular that are looking at how they can apply some of the technologies and the techniques and the engineering learnings that they have. And agriculture is a great environment to do that because they. There's a huge need, as we've already talked about. But also imagine that you're deploying some of these, let's say a robot, a new robot system in a field that's bumpy, that has flooding capabilities, that's dry sometimes, that is incredibly hot sometimes. I mean, it really adds a whole new element to the stress that we're putting on these devices.

23:28
Adrian Percy
So that's one thing. Agriculture is a very cool place to be right now. I think the other thing, in terms of taking a first step, if you're talking about entrepreneurship, I mean, really getting informed. Programs like the Seed2Grow program are designed specifically to put students and faculty in front of experienced entrepreneurs in a very informal setting where you can ask stupid questions if you know, not that any question is stupid, but you can ask those really basic questions that you may be hesitant to ask in other environments and sit down and have a quality conversation and explore these areas with. With these entrepreneurs who have seen it and done it 100 times in some cases. So I think, you know, enrolling in one of these programs is. Is really valuable and hopefully people will get a lot out of it.

24:16
Shradha Bhatia
And like, do you have, like, any examples of, like, students who've like, grown through the Seed2Grow program or, like, any, like, final things that you'd like to mention?

24:25
Adrian Percy
Yeah. So in the Seed2Grow program right now, we. We have currently seven companies. We had eight, but we had Hoofprint Biome who graduated. We had a graduation party for them two weeks ago. They managed to raise $15 million. So a lot of money to help them in the next evolution of their company, which they will move off campus and they'll move to Durham and set up their downtown Durham. So that's one example. But then we have seven other companies at various stages of development. Some of them are very early and some of them are not quite companies yet, but will be. But then we have student competitions.

25:02
Adrian Percy
And so that's one way that we've managed to kind of unlock some of the ideas and enthusiasm that we have amongst our student population, where we have a student competition where you can present an entrepreneurial idea in the agricultural environment with just a two minute video. And we had a couple of students. We had Harry Irvin from Plant and Microbial Biology, we had Mabel Barreiro from chemistry, both of which had great ideas. Both of them, are, well, working on commercialization of those ideas and hopefully they'll be successful. But we have a lot of other examples as well. So yes, there are definitely students who are moving forward in that area.

25:42
Shradha Bhatia
That's really good. Yes. Well, thank you. Those were all my questions that I had for you. So thank you for like joining us today and telling us about the Seed2Grow program. Thank you.

26:04
Eric Tegethoff
September is National Suicide Prevention Month, and LGBTQ youth in North Carolina and around the country are finding it harder to receive support because of a move by the Trump administration. In July, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services administration removed the press 3 option from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which sent people to a hotline that specializes in supporting LGBTQ youth. Sarah McHale is CEO of Timeout Youth, the only LGBTQ community space in Charlotte. The organization provides support for therapy and housing. She says there's already anxiety among young people about the Trump administration, and cutting the Press three option will only make matters worse.

26:43
Sarah Mikhail
They hear the person who leads this country cutting fund for something that is directly connected to saving their lives. So it continued to send the message of we don't actually care if you exist or not.

26:56
Eric Tegethoff
The Trump administration says funding ran out for the specialized hotline. LGBTQ youth are twice as likely to experience a mental health condition compared to their peers, and the numbers are even higher for transgender youth. The Trevor Project had been contracting with the government on the 988 line for LGBTQ. They still operate a hotline at 866-488-7386. The Trans Lifeline also offers mental health support at 877-565-8860. Mikhail says she still refers people to 988, but cautions that the person on the other end of the line might not be affirming of their identity. She also notes that there's a misconception that LGBTQ people call lifelines to talk specifically about their identity. But that's not usually the case far more often.

27:42
Sarah Mikhail
What our young people tell us is it's just the implicit understanding of your lived experience. You don't have to explain why school feels difficult or you're struggling with your parent because that person understands that your identity creates barriers for other people to try to relate to you.

28:00
Eric Tegethoff
Mikhail says Timeout youth continues to center joy in the LGBTQ experience. She says young people's resilience gives her hope for the future.

28:07
Sarah Mikhail
That I can see young people being themselves even more in the face of this makes me feel really hopeful that young people are going to save us if our elders would just step back and let them.

28:17
Eric Tegethoff
For North Carolina News Service, I'm Eric Tegethoff. Find our trust indicators@public newsservice.org. September is national Infant Mortality Awareness Month, shining a light on a difficult and persistent issue. The infant mortality rate in North Carolina was 6.9 deaths per thousand births in 2023, which was the 10th highest rate in the nation. There are also large disparities along racial lines, with black infants dying at three times the rate of white infants. Caitlin Richards with the organization NC Child, says the top two causes of infant mortality in North Carolina are low birth weight and birth defects that can be.

29:00
Kaitlyn Richards
Tied directly back to access to early prenatal care within the first trimester of a pregnancy, which black mothers typ have less access to that prenatal care in their first trimester compared to white mothers and those of other race and ethnicities.

29:16
Eric Tegethoff
State policymakers are looking into ways to reduce the infant mortality rate. Each year, the North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force sends a report to the governor and General assembly which includes recommendations for reducing child deaths, Richards says. One vital resource is home visiting programs in which doulas or community health workers go to new parents homes during pregnancy and postpartum to educate them about things such as safe sleep practices, she says. Another important resource is access to prenatal care.

29:45
Kaitlyn Richards
We cannot overstate how important Medicaid access is in particular for infants and children in North Carolina. Medicaid covers about 50% of all births in North Carolina, so it plays a pivotal role when we're looking at these outcomes.

29:58
Eric Tegethoff
However, the future of Medicaid funds is in doubt after the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill act, which is estimated to cut a trillion dollars from the program over the next decade. In response, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services recently announced it was cutting Medicaid spending by nearly $320 million starting in October. Richards says it's still unclear what these cuts will mean, but that they will likely have impacts on North Carolina children's well being for years and decades to come. For North Carolina News Service, I'm Eric Taggedoff. Find our trust [e-mail].

31:24
Shradha Bhatia
This has been Eye on the Triangle from WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1 Raleigh. Our theme song is Krakatoa by Noah Stark, licensed under Commons. To re-listen to this or any other episode, visit WKNC or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Thank you for listening.