Towards genomics-assisted breeding of medical marijuana

BedroCan is a leading licensed producer of medical marijuana in Canada. Its R&D department has identified aset of compounds in marijuana that influence consumer preference and medicinal effect. Their aim is to breednovel marijuana strains with specific profiles of these compounds. But this task is challenging: performingdetailed chemical tests of thousands of offspring in their breeding programme is prohibitively time consumingand expensive. They have a clear breeding target but cannot achieve it on their own.The proposed project will foster a new partnership between BedroCan and the Myles lab that will develop thefirst genomics-assisted breeding toolkit for marijuana. By the end of the project timeline, we will identify anovel set of genetic markers that BedroCan's breeders can use to identify improved strains with the desiredchemical profiles at the seedling stage, without the need to grow them to maturity and perform expensivechemical tests. Not only will this accelerate BedroCan's breeding programme, but the new knowledge fromthis project will generate valuable intellectual property for BedroCan. Furthermore, the aim is to then furtherdevelop the resulting IP into a commercial genetic test to be licensed to others, providing a potential novelsource of revenue for the company. The discoveries from this project will not only lend legitimacy to a rapidlygrowing, multi-billion dollar industry in need of scientific input, but it will also accelerate the improvement ofmarijuana strains that attain higher consumer acceptance and better medical outcomes for Canadians.