Dr. Marko Flajšman is an Assistant Professor of crop production at Biotechnical faculty, University of Ljubljana, where he is engaged in research into the cultivation of various crops such as soybeans, maize, wheat and potatoes. He is particularly interested in research on cannabis, both industrial and medical, especially breeding, and other research. He is the co-breeder of 4 already certified varieties of medicinal cannabis. In his work with medical cannabis, he comes across breeding techniques that lead to the production of feminised seeds, which was recently published in a top-tier journal (https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.718092), and conducts other important studies on medical cannabis, the results of which were also recently published in a top-tier journal (https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.786161). He has also been involved in molecular biology studies, e.g. sex determination of cannabis plants, genotyping and genetic characterization. He worked on high-throughput sequencing of cannabis as part of the research programme led by Prof. Dr. Jernej Jakše from Biotechnical faculty. Dr. Flajšman is also a breeder of the first and so far only officially certified Slovenian variety of industrial hemp called Fiona. In 2024, he led the project called “Introduction of new Slovenian varieties into industrial hemp production in Slovenia”. The main objective of the project was to expand the use of the Slovenian industrial hemp variety Fiona to real production in Slovenia and to test two new Slovenian varieties in production, which are in the process of official testing and are expected to be included in the European list of varieties in 2025.
