From the Oregonian and a Portland Business Journal article:
“A new aroma hop breeding program will be created in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Oregon State University in Corvallis.
A gift pledge of $807,000 from Indie Hops, a Portland-based hop
merchant, will support the new program, which will be led by Shaun
Townsend, a research associate and hop breeding specialist at OSU.
Indie Hops already has provided $200,000 to OSU’s Thomas Shellhammer, holder of the Nor’Wester Professorship in Fermentation Science, to foster research in new techniques for developing aroma hops and to study aroma hop chemistry. The new hop breeding program will work closely with Shellhammer’s lab to study hop essential oil composition and how individual oil components impart the characteristic flavor and aroma to beer.”
This means in a few years we might get the next Citra or Nelson hops. IPA’s will not be the same.