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ABLeS Participant: Tobias Kretzschmar, Southern Cross University

Project title

Determination of genetic basis of sex expression in hemp (Cannabis sativa)

Collaborators and funding

This project is funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage project LP240200616 (Swinging both ways – the genetic control of sex expression in hemp)

Contact(s)

Project description and aims

Hemp (low THC Cannabis sativa) is an emerging Australian crop that produces high-quality edible oils and plant-based protein from seeds. Hemp typically has separate male and female plants, with 50% of the crop being males that don’t produce seed, causing low and variable yields.

This project will characterize novel sex-determining genetic factors in hemp, using quantitative genetic and functional genomic approaches. This includes Quantitative Trait Locus (QTL) mapping, Bulk Segregant Analysis via sequencing (BSAseq), transcriptomic analysis via RNA sequencing, DNA resequencing and potentially de-novo assemblies of Cannabis genomes.

Project outcomes include enhanced knowledge on hemp sex expression, novel hemp crop technologies and associated germplasm that will deliver significant increases to seed yields.

How is ABLeS supporting this work?

This project is supported by the Production Bioinformatics scheme provided by ABLeS, providing access to compute and storage resources at the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI).

Expected outputs enabled by participation in ABLeS

Outputs will be published in peer-reviewed journals and genomics data will be submitted in appropriate public repositories.


These details have been provided by project members at project initiation. For more information on the project, please consult the contact(s) or project links above.