SEED - Origin Agritech Secures Exclusive Nationwide Rights to Zhongdan 6202, the Flagship Machine-Harvest Corn Hybrid Developed Under China'

Under the agreement signed with the Institute of Crop Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences ("CAAS"), Origin Agritech holds exclusive rights across the full commercial chain — seed production, sales and marketing, demonstration promotion, and intellectual property enforcement — for a variety that carries national registration approval and three consecutive years of national trial data behind it. The agreement moves a state-funded breeding breakthrough out of the research institute and into commercial production. CAAS bred Zhongdan 6202 over four years of publicly funded work; Origin Agritech will carry it the last mile — from experimental plot to farm gate — through the distributor, cooperative, and agronomic service network the Company has built across Northeast and North China. That handoff, from laboratory to open field, is the step at which most state-funded varieties in China stall. "CAAS handed us a hybrid that has already cleared national registration and three years of regional and production trials, which means we are not spending the next four years proving whether it works — we are spending them getting it into the ground," said Weibin Yan, Chief Executive Officer of Origin Agritech. "Zhongdan 6202 solves the problem large-scale Northeast growers have been living with: an early-maturing hybrid they can run a combine through without shattering the kernel. Our objective is to make it the benchmark variety for the East-Northeast early-maturing machine-harvest belt, and we have committed demonstration acreage, channel capacity, and field agronomy support to that objective beginning with the fiscal 2026 planting cycle." The exclusive license was formalized at a signing ceremony held on July 15, 2026, at the Institute of Crop Sciences in Beijing. Li Xinhai, Director General of the Science and Technology Management Bureau of CAAS, addressed the ceremony, characterizing Zhongdan 6202 as a signature deliverable of the national 14th Five-Year Plan seed initiative, developed to close two specific gaps: the shortage of machine-harvestable germplasm in the East-Northeast early-maturing corn region, and China's dependence on external sources for elite corn genetics. Director General Li cited Origin Agritech's established nationwide promotion system and downstream industrial capability as the reason the Institute selected the Company. He stated that the Institute intends this license to be the first layer of a longer-term, full-chain research and commercialization relationship spanning biotechnology R&D, elite variety selection, commercial development, and market deployment. Financial Outlook: Origin Agritech expects Zhongdan 6202 to contribute incremental cash flow of approximately RMB 5 million (approximately US$0.7 million) in fiscal year 2026 (ending September 30), approximately RMB 20 million (approximately US$2.9 million) in fiscal year 2027, and approximately RMB 40 million (approximately US$5.9 million) in fiscal year 2028