BATON ROUGE- Southern University's Ag Center amended its agreement Wednesday with a Lafayette-based company in charge of constructing and operating its medical marijuana growery, according to spokeswoman Janene Tate.

Advanced Biomedics LLC has held the contract with Southern since last year but recently became embroiled in an internal lawsuit between the two chief investors.

Southern had given the company until the close of business Thursday to ensure it was ready to move forward, otherwise, the university had planned to choose another investor.

The new agreement requires Advanced to settle its internal dispute before the Southern University System board ratifies the new agreement at its meeting on May 25.

"We just want to move forward with our plans," said Tate.

Southern hopes to have medical marijuana ready for production into cannabis oil by early 2019. The planned location for the growery is in East Baton Rouge Parish near the borders of Zachary and Baker.