Seeds West Inc (the bermudagrass specialists)

Pennington Seed, Inc. was founded in 1945 by Brooks Pennington, Sr. with the purchase of a small, rural seed and feed store in Madison, Georgia. Over 50 years later, Pennington Seed has become a rapidly growing, diversified company that produces and distributes numerous seed products and services used by individuals and businesses in a wide variety of industries. Headquartered in Madison, Georgia, the company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Central Garden & Pet, the leading national distributor of turfgrass seed, lawn, garden, and pet supply products.

The Pennington grass seed manufacturing facilities are some of the largest and most modern seed conditioning facilities in the industry. They are located in the major cool season and warm season grass seed production areas - Madison, Georgia; Greenfield, Missouri; Lebanon, Oregon; Roll, Arizona; and El Centro, California. The latest technology is used to test, condition, coat, and package a full range of Pennington seed varieties.

Link to Pennington: www.penningtonseed.com

Seeds West, Inc., a fully owned subsidiary and division of Pennington Seed, Inc., is the world's largest bermudagrass seed company. The Warm Season Turfgrass Research Program at Seeds West is recognized as one of the world's foremost private warm season turfgrass research programs. Seeds West pioneered the use of improved turf-type bermudagrass from seed with the release of the Certified variety, NuMex SAHARA, in 1989. Since that time, the program has released six more improved turf-type varieties.

In addition to the turf-type varieties, the company produces, conditions, coats, and distributes common bermudagrass and giant bermudagrass for use as turfgrass, forage, pasture, and erosion control in the bermudagrass growing regions of the world. Over 95% of the world's supply of bermudagrass seed is produced in southwestern Arizona and the Imperial Valley of California. Seeds West is the only bermudagrass seed company with facilities in both of these production areas. Seeds West has conditioning and coating facilities in Roll, AZ, and a conditioning facility in El Centro, CA. Company headquarters are located in Yuma, AZ.

Link to Seeds West www.seedswest.com

Seeds West Research Team

Dr. Charlie Rodgers is responsible for the Seeds West, Inc. Warm Season Turfgrass Research Program in Arizona. He joined Seeds West in 1997 after completing his doctoral work at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. At the University of Nebraska, he worked with Dr. Terrance Riordan in the buffalograss program. His background also includes alfalfa and bermudagrass breeding at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico and weed science research at the University of Arizona.

He is a member of the American Society of Agronomy, the International Turfgrass Society and the Pure Seed Advisory Committee of the Arizona Crop Improvement Association. Charlie and his wife, Pam, reside in Casa Grande, Arizona. His office is located at the University of Arizona Maricopa Agricultural Research Center in Maricopa, Arizona.

Dr. Arden Baltensperger has been Director of Turfgrass Research since the company initiated a research program in 1989. He previously conducted turfgrass breeding and genetics at New Mexico State University (NMSU) where he is an emeritus professor of Agronomy. Arden started bermudagrass research at the University of Arizona in the 1960's, interrupted that to head the NMSU Agronomy Department for 12 years, and resumed bermudagrass research there in 1978. He and graduate students published a number of genetic and plant breeding papers and developed the NuMex SAHARA variety, which was exclusively released to Seeds West, Inc. in 1987. Since then he has released 5 additional seeded bermudagrass varieties.

Arden is a former president of the American Society of Agronomy and has been recognized for his pioneering work on seed propagated bermudagrass by the Arizona and New Mexico Crop Improvement Associations. He and his wife Elsie live in Las Cruces, New Mexico.