Predicting chemovar cluster and variety verification in vegetative cannabis accessions using targeted single nucleotide polymorphisms
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Agricultural Science, Genetics, Genomics
- Keywords
- cannabis, chemovar, clustering, terpenoid expression, SNPs, variety identification
- Copyright
- © 2018 Henry et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Predicting chemovar cluster and variety verification in vegetative cannabis accessions using targeted single nucleotide polymorphisms. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27442v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27442v1
Abstract
The cannabis industry has gained momentum and global acceptance recently, culminating in the legalization of adult use at the federal level in Canada, a first among G20 countries. Inherent to legalization, a highly regulated regime has emerged, mostly centered on end user safety, restriction of access to youth, and diversion of market shares away from the black market and organized crime. The lack of authentication of cannabis varieties remains as an issue often unaddressed by the regulators, although this has the potential to seriously hamper research and the medical application of cannabis derived products. Here, we extend upon previous work that aims to classify cannabis accessions based on their dominant terpene profiles, focusing on four main informative terpenes, beta-myrcene, terpinolene, limonene and beta-caryophyllene. We identify three major terpene groups and present a simple genetic-based tool to bridge the variety identification gap and to enable the prediction of terpenoid expression in vegetative cannabis. This genetic tool offers promise to sorting out the strain name game that has been ongoing, thus providing greater transparency in the industry and contributing to an enhanced understanding of cannabis medicine for the end user.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
NJ-tree of the 70 accessions
NJ-tree of the 70 accessions demonstrating lack of confidence in strain names vs clustering of accessions.