Hops (Humulus lupulus) are increasingly becoming an important cash crop in BC primarily used to give beer a characteristic aroma and bitterness. There are over 100 different varieties of hops, and each can impart a different beer flavour profile. In recent years, beers with unique combinations of hop varieties, mainly India pale ales or IPAs, have markedly increased in popularity and have been a cornerstone of BC’s burgeoning craft brewing industry. However, distinguishing them based on morphological characters alone can be difficult. An efficient and reliable DNA marker-based genotyping method is needed. Chloroplast DNA is ideal for identifying hop varieties because it is maternally inherited, and the hops are the female flowers of the hop plant. Our goal is to develop a DNA barcoding system using whole chloroplast genomes (i.e. ultra-barcoding) for identification of hop varieties.
