Global Scientists Push for eDNA Standards That Everyone Can Actually Use

Environmental DNA has become one of the most promising tools in modern ecology. By collecting water, soil or air samples and reading the genetic traces left behind by organisms, researchers can detect endangered species, track invasive arrivals and map entire communities without ever seeing or disturbing the animals themselves. But as the field matures from experimental science into applied biomonitoring, a quieter struggle is underway over who gets to write the rules. A new study published in Metabarcoding and Metagenomics argues that international eDNA standards, largely shaped by well-funded laboratories in Europe, North America, Japan and Australia, risk excluding the very regions that hold much of the planet’s biodiversity.

The study, led by the eDNA Collaborative at the University of Washington, brought together eighteen researchers from Africa, South America, Asia and the Pacific Islands to discuss their experiences, hopes and concerns about the standardisation of eDNA methods. Rather than surveying a statistically representative sample, the team used a qualitative approach rooted in grounded theory. Co-authors responded to open-ended questions in semi-structured interviews lasting thirty to forty-five minutes, covering everything from sample collection and PCR workflows to bioinformatics and data reporting. The interview notes were hand-coded through iterative sessions until thematic saturation was reached, with the participants themselves, who were also co-authors, reviewing and refining the resulting categories to guard against researcher bias.

The participants were quick to acknowledge the benefits that well-crafted standards could bring. Nearly all pointed to reproducibility and comparability as central goals: results from a river in the Amazon, a coral reef in the Pacific and a lake in Scandinavia should be accurate and interpretable across time and space. Standards could also boost the credibility of eDNA science, making it easier to secure funding and win acceptance from regulators and resource managers. Some researchers noted that achievable certification schemes could even democratise the field, allowing smaller, less wealthy laboratories to demonstrate quality and stand on equal footing with prestigious institutions.

Yet the concerns voiced by the group were striking and consistent. Access to resources emerged as a near-universal worry. In many parts of the Global South, basic laboratory supplies are scarce and, when obtainable, can cost three to four times their price in Europe or North America, with shipping delays of many months due to customs and the absence of regional suppliers. Reagents, filters and flow cells are expensive or simply unavailable. Where standards require synthetic DNA for calibration or probe-based qPCR chemistry, some researchers find those requirements physically impossible to meet, forcing them to adapt protocols to whatever materials they can secure, sometimes at a cost in peer review.

Infrastructure gaps compound the problem. Sterile extraction laboratories are absent across entire regions, including polar zones, dense jungle interiors and the Amazon Forest, and on research vessels. Standards that demand separate rooms with dedicated air sources are cost prohibitive or infeasible. Sequencers are limited, and where machines exist they are often optimised for human genomics rather than environmental samples. Refrigeration and reliable cold chains are unreliable in some areas. Portable sequencing platforms such as those from Oxford Nanopore are beginning to change the picture, but they remain far from universally accessible, and the computing power and specialised training needed for bioinformatics keep many researchers locked out of the analysis stage altogether.

Beyond resources, participants questioned whether a one-size-fits-all standard can work at all. The ecological range of eDNA applications stretches from tropical forests to Arctic deserts, and from soil to water to air, making a single rigid protocol unlikely to translate across contexts. Many technologies are still at low readiness levels and evolving rapidly, so premature standardisation could stifle the experimentation the field needs. A further barrier is the lack of local DNA reference libraries: in the most biodiverse tropical regions, where new species are discovered weekly and many organisms are cryptic or rare, researchers cannot identify sequences without expensive baseline inventories. As one participant put it, your sequences are only as good as your libraries.

Data governance raised equally thorny issues. Standardised data reporting is essential for interoperability with global repositories such as the Ocean Biodiversity Information System, GBIF and the Barcode of Life Database, but computing costs, storage limits and unreliable internet connectivity make compliance burdensome in remote locations. More fundamentally, participants spoke about ownership and control. Shipping samples overseas for processing, often cheaper than local analysis given weak currencies, raises fears of colonial science and loss of authority over genetic resources. The Nagoya Protocol was cited both as a hurdle for cross-border sample movement and as a framework that some feel does not go far enough. Participants also flagged the sensitive problem of human DNA bycatch: incidental genetic traces of people that can be geolocated in public databases, potentially exposing communities, cultural sites or threatened species to exploitation without consent.

From these conversations, the authors distilled four central recommendations. First, standards should be adaptable, offering tiered options for field versus laboratory settings, different analytical goals and varying budgets, distinguishing minimum requirements from aspirational ideals. Flexibility, they note, is actually a recognised function of good standards, which act as boundary objects enabling communication across communities. Second, regional capacity must be built so that analysis stays close to where samples originate, avoiding the extractive pattern documented in recent studies in which Global North researchers collect samples and process them at home, sometimes without local permits or collaboration. The Africa BioGenome Project’s Open Institute, which has trained more than four hundred African scientists in genomics and bioinformatics through regional workshops, offers a working model, as does Australia’s emerging National eDNA Reference Centre for proficiency testing and regionally relevant assay design.

Third, the authors call for sensitising the standardisation process to data sovereignty. They point to the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, already adopted by institutions including the Smithsonian, as a framework that could be incorporated into eDNA standards, allowing communities to opt out of publishing sensitive data and insisting that local knowledge be valued alongside genetic expertise. Lessons from palaeogenomics, where researchers have developed accountability measures acknowledging historical harms of scientific colonialism, offer a template. Finally, the study reframes standardisation itself as a form of global capacity building: if a standard is genuinely international, practitioners everywhere should be able to meet it. Open, accessible and affordable standards, the authors argue, could knit together a global network of researchers rising together to confront the biodiversity crisis, provided the conversation includes all hemispheres and the broadest possible range of voices.

For a technology whose promise lies in being non-invasive, cost-effective and democratic, the message from the Global South is clear: standards that ignore the realities of infrastructure and funding will not unify eDNA science, they will fracture it. Making the rules workable for everyone, the study concludes, is not a concession but the very condition for eDNA to become the trusted, planetary monitoring tool it aspires to be.

Subject of Research: Accessibility and equity in the development of international environmental DNA standards

Article Title: Centering accessibility, increasing capacity, and fostering innovation in the development of international eDNA standards

Article References: Hirsch, S., Acharya-Patel, N., Amamoo, P. A., Borrero-Pérez, G. H., Cahyani, N. K. D., Ginigini, J. G. M., Hurley, K. K. C., Lopes-Lima, M., Lopez, M. L., Mapholi, N., Ouattara, K. N., Pazmiño, D. A., Rii, Y., Thompson, F., von der Heyden, S., Watsa, M., Yepes-Narvaez, V., Allan, E. A., & Kelly, R. (2024). Centering accessibility, increasing capacity, and fostering innovation in the development of international eDNA standards. Metabarcoding and Metagenomics, 8, Article e126058. https://doi.org/10.3897/mbmg.8.126058

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/mbmg.8.126058

Keywords: environmental DNA, eDNA standards, biomonitoring, Global South, data sovereignty, biodiversity, metabarcoding, reference libraries, capacity building, Nagoya Protocol, Indigenous data governance, bioinformatics