S&W Seed Company announced the company has signed a new license agreement for production and marketing of two sunflower varieties for the Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan with a seed company with significant distribution throughout the region.

S&W’s sunflower hybrids will be introduced into the market place for the 2017 production season. The licensee has commenced commercial scale seed production activity in the Ukraine.

Russia and the Ukraine are the two largest sunflower markets and they representing nearly 60% of the global sunflower production. This agreement highlights the first commercial activity that S&W’s recent acquisition of SV Genetics has had in these lucrative markets.

The two licensed varieties are traditional polyunsaturated oil types, however the licensee is also evaluating high oleic types, and a variety resistant to Imidazilone herbicide. This licensee is expected to evaluate S&W’s alfalfa seed products in 2017. SVG has licensing agreements with different partners to provide its grain sorghum, forage sorghum and sunflower genetics throughout the world.

“We are extremely pleased with the addition of this new licensee to the portfolio of seed companies that are working to expand the production and distribution of our newly acquired sunflower seed varieties across the world. This licensee chose to move forward with our varieties due to the diversity and strength of these two varieties, and also the SV Genetics breeding program as a whole. We look forward to working with this new seed company on a go forward basis to expand our sunflower operations, and potentially our alfalfa operations as well,” said Mark Grewal, president and chief executive officer of S&W Seed Company.