Mapping disease resistance, quality and yield traits in cannabis sativa L.

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Cannabis is an ancient source of fibre, oil and medicines. This plant is largely unexplored due to its drug content and laws against production, trafficking and consumption. However, with the advent of laws to regulate its production and legal medical and recreation uses more information about its genetic diversity and the genetic relationships among clones is required. This will be especially important for designing plant breeding strategies for disease resistant varieties in the future. The recent recognition of cannabis as an important medicinal plant has resulted in some research on different functional and evolutionary aspects of this plant, including a draft genome and transcriptome. However, there is little published information on quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with economically important traits. Genetic characterization of several important traits, including: female flower bud yield, THC and CBD content and disease resistance are required for effective selection and breeding economically viable cannabis varieties. *The objectives of the proposed collaborative project between the University of Guelph and Canopy Growth Corporation (Tweed) are to:**- better understand the genetic variation among important commercial strains at Canopy Growth Corp**- develop a genetic mapping population between a disease resistant cannabis line and other lines with desirable production traits (such as bud yield, cannabanoid cannabinoid content, plant architecture, plant maturity)**- identify SNPs among the parents and the lines in the population lines by deep and skim sequencing,**- derive a linkage map for cannabis based on segregation of the markers in the population, and**- map quantitative trait loci (QTL) for important production traits in cannabis, and**- develop molecular markers for economically important traits.*This information will be useful to develop molecular methods for selecting powdery mildew resistant cannabis strains and implementing these methods in breeding novel cannabis varieties.