Canada currently imports nearly 2,500 tons of hops each year to support its growing brewing industry. While the Fraser Valley in British Columbia was once the largest hop-producing region in the British Commonwealth during the 1930s and 1940s, local production has since declined, with most hops now sourced from the U.S. and Germany. 

However, climate change is shifting the landscape. The Fraser Valley receives over 540 mm of natural rainfall during the hop growing season – compared to regions like Washington’s Yakima Valley, which rely on over 700 mm of irrigation. As incidences of drought and extreme heat increase, BC’s natural climate is becoming more favorable for hop cultivation. 

Traditionally, breeding a new hop variety can take over 15 years, but this duration can be reduced significantly using marker-assisted selection. Researchers from KPU, with support from the BC Hops Growers Association, aimed to accelerate the breeding process by identifying DNA markers associated with key agronomic traits. They also sought to create a hop genotyping platform to rapidly screen crops for desirable disease resistant and climate resilient traits. 

The team developed a high-quality, custom, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping array that achieved a concordance rate of over 95%-98% with whole-genome sequencing data, indicating its high accuracy and reliability. They used this platform to generate genotypic data from over 800 individual plants in the KPU hops breeding program. Using the validated platform and genotyped mapping population, the project supports the accelerated selection of climate-resilience and other agronomically important traits – enabling long-term, data-driven breeding efforts while significantly reducing the time and cost of developing new hop varieties. 

These innovations have the potential to reduce Canada's reliance on hop imports by enabling more robust and scalable domestic production. By equipping the industry with advanced tools and insights, this initiative supports the strategic expansion of hop cultivation acreage, helping to meet national demand and strengthen the resilience of the Canadian hop sector.