Mid-West Seed Services is finalizing an expansion of our facilities with the addition of 12,500 sq. ft. to our existing building. This expansion is a continuation of our commitment to provide the highest quality facilities and testing services to the seed industry. Soybean sand testing, corn cold testing, DNA Laboratory and inventory/sample storage are the areas requiring space. To meet the increased demand for soybean sand tests and corn cold tests we are adding a two 900 sq ft. germination rooms, a 400 sq. ft. sand chilling room and a 1,500 sq ft. streamlined sand covering and evaluation area.

Our DNA Laboratory expansion (3,200 sq ft) under the direction of Dr. Weiping Zhang, is adding a state-of-the-art series of positive pressure, Hepa filtered DNA processing and amplification rooms. This clean air facility will assure client sample identity and position MWSS to meet future USDA laboratory accreditation requirements.

A significant portion of our expansion is dedicated to sample and inventory storage. The 6,500 sq. ft. building will be used to store client testing samples, testing media (Kimpak and sand) and other testing supplies.

Another area of change is our computer data software and website data retrieval service. We spent the summer reinvesting into our sample information tracking software. Our former program is software originating from Montana State University in the early 1980’s and written in Dbase II. We are converting this software from a DOS based system over to Visual Foxpro, a windows-based database. We have always made our software changes in-house to allow greater flexibility and quicker response time for changes in testing services. Our website date retrieval work has focused on enhancing the sorting of data for clients.

For more information on MWSS and our testing services, please visit our website, www.mwseed.com today!