Origin Agritech Ltd. (NASDAQ: SEED) (the "Company" or "Origin"), an agriculture technology company, announced today that its drought resistant GMO trait has completed production trials and an application has been filed for biosafety certificate approval.

Through its collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), Origin has already successfully converted its elite corn hybrids into drought resistant traits. The trait has expressed excellent performance under water stress conditions through the whole growing period. Multiyear experiments have shown the yield of drought tolerance corn is 9.2-16.2% higher than non-GMO corn under similar conditions. Under irrigated conditions, the GMO enhanced corn increases water use efficiency by 33-47%.

Dr. Gengchen Han, Origin Agritech's Chairman, said, "We are very excited to have another GMO trait pending approval for a biosafety certificate, which is the final step in the approval process before the production license. We expect drought resistance to play a key role in the agricultural industry as it is forced to adapt to climate change disruptions globally."

About Origin Agritech Limited

Origin Agritech Limited, founded in 1997 and headquartered in Zhong-Guan-Cun (ZGC) Life Science Park in Beijing, is a leading Chinese agricultural technology company. In crop seed biotechnologies, Origin Agritech's phytase corn was the first transgenic corn to receive the Bio-Safety Certificate from China's Ministry of Agriculture. Over the years, Origin has established a robust biotechnology seed pipeline including products with glyphosate tolerance and pest resistance (Bt) traits. For further information, please visit the Company's website at: www.originagritech.com. The company also maintains a twitter account for updating investors on company and industry developments, which is @origin_agritech.

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