The Environment Agency has published a paper setting out its position on accepting DNA-based methods for environmental monitoring and decision-making in the absence of a regulated framework to validate the methods.

The Environment Agency is the competent monitoring authority for EU directives including the Water Framework Directive, Marine Strategy Framework Directive, Bathing Waters Directive and Environmental Quality Standards.

However, a formal regulated framework has not yet been established for validating and approving DNA-based methods, although a formal position on the framework for this and the standards required is currently under discussion by the regulatory agencies of England, Scotland and Wales.

Areas where the EA is looking to develop DNA-based methods include monitoring for ecological assessment of water quality. The Agency is also exploring the use of DNA-based methods to inform decision-making in other areas such as pollution source tracking in bathing waters.

The position statement applies to academics, private and public sector laboratories, consultants and any other organisations developing DNA-based methods for application to regulatory and management decision-making.

The Agency is working closely with the research community to develop new ecological monitoring methods and tools that seek to provide greater insight into the makeup of biological communities and to improve its current monitoring of individual species.

The EA is hoping to deliver novel DNA-based, operationally valid monitoring methods that address some of the challenges faced by traditional methods and could save money in the future.

Two approaches are being focused on:

• one targets DNA extracted directly from the organisms themselves
• the other uses environmental DNA (eDNA) which is released from an organism via faeces, urine, slime, skin and so on into environmental samples such as water, soil and sediments.

“The adoption of DNA-based methods in regulations will give a paradigm shift to ecological assessment. For this DNA-based paradigm to emerge and to enable us to make appropriately informed regulatory and management decisions, we need to be confident that the information generated is reliable, highly specific and can accurately indicate the presence of the target organism(s) in the test water body", the statement says.

Until a framework is agreed, the Agency said it will need to assess the suitability of DNA-based methods for application, either alongside traditional methods or as a replacement, on a case-by-case basis.

Click here to download the EA Position Statement