An air sampling device which will "reveal new insights about the hidden biodiversity around us" and more has been placed in Oxfordshire.
Researchers at the Earlham Institute in Norwich have begun a year-long project of sampling and sequencing the air at sites across Norfolk.
Eight samplers have been placed across Norfolk, with many more now in Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Oxfordshire.
The approach has been developed in collaboration with the Natural History Museum in London.
Over the course of the next 12 months, their work will reveal new insights about the hidden biodiversity around us, differences between habitats, and how this changes with the seasons.
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The bulk of the DNA captured on the first day of sampling came from plants, likely reflecting the high pollen count in springtime.
All living organisms constantly shed fragments of their DNA into the surrounding environment.
Researchers at the Earlham Institute are capturing and studying airborne eDNA from different environments to learn more about the biodiversity we can’t normally see.
Dr Richard Leggett, who has been leading the technology development underpinning this project at the Earlham Institute, said: “There are extremely small amounts of biological material in the air for us to sample.
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"We have to pull in a lot of air - thousands of litres - to be confident we’ll have captured any traces of the organisms that might be in a particular habitat.
“The cutting-edge technology we’re using, alongside new techniques we’ve developed, allows us to quickly find and sequence any DNA that was in the air - which could originate from plants, animals, bacteria, viruses, or even allergens.”
One of the research group’s interests is crop pathogens, many of which use the wind to spread.
These pathogens can be devastating for farmers, who can’t usually detect them until visible signs of infection appear on the plants, at which point it is often too late to save them.
The latest project sees the technology being deployed across Norfolk’s diverse habitats, with the process repeated every three months to reveal any seasonal trends.
Encompassing the county’s coastline, forests, broads, and urban areas, the project will catalogue the species detected across eight sites.
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The group also detected many airborne plant pathogens, including yellow rust - a serious crop pathogen - detected at a wheat field.
Each of the sampling sites has produced a distinct profile, which will now be tracked over the next 12 months to better understand the impact of the changing seasons.
The project has been enabled by funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of UKRI, through its support of the Earlham Institute’s Decoding Biodiversity strategic research programme.
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