Five Points, California, USA
April 5, 2011
S&W Seed Company (NASDAQ:SANW - News) today announced that the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is launching trials to confirm that S&W's high yielding, warm climate and salt tolerant alfalfa varieties can perform in Israel.
It is anticipated that the field trials will provide for evaluation of SW 9720, SW 9215 and SW 9628 varieties on two to four acre planting sites, and will run for a period of three years. S&W plans to ship the trial seeds upon receipt of final approval from a U.S.-based seed testing facility certified by the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA), pursuant to the requirements of the Israeli import permit.
Mark Grewal, President and CEO of S&W, stated, "From an agricultural standpoint, Israel has long been viewed as very sophisticated, renown for innovations in crop irrigation, water conservation and greenhouse technologies. We are confident that the Israeli government will conclude that our alfalfa varieties are indeed among the best in seed quality, genetics and yield and are ideally suited for mass crop production in Israel."
In field trials conducted by UC Davis and the University of Arizona, SW 9720 and SW 9215 have consistently demonstrated high yields of high quality hay grown in a wide array of harsh farming conditions. SW 9720 has earned distinction as the number one high yielding alfalfa variety with salt tolerance in university trials, and led all entries in both yield and feed quality in a trial conducted at the USDA Salinity Laboratory where alfalfa and other forage species were under salt water irrigation management. Similarly, SW 9215 has tested among the highest yielding salt-tolerant alfalfas certified to date, yielding 18% above salinity check varieties when irrigated with water with very high saline content. In a three year forage trial conducted at the University of California Kearney Research Center, SW 9628 was shown to be the highest yielding variety of 51 entries tested. SW 9628 is a non-dormant variety that adapts very well in extremely hot weather conditions and, like SW 9720 and SW 9215, is resistant to most insects, nematodes and plant disease.
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