Environmental DNA: A Potential Tool in Biodiversity Conservation

Environment DNA or eDNA studies are regarded as one of the most advanced and powerful tools in the current era to study biodiversity. Not only this technique is useful to study on current status of biodiversity, but also it is well adapted to study from the retro perspective. In biodiversity-related aspects, eDNA has been used to study biomass, species composition, detection of invasive species, identification of unknown species, monitoring the rare and threatened species, study of ancient environments and extinction, etc. Although eDNA is advanced over the traditional methodologies, it has certain drawbacks or limitations. So, judicious uses are required while using these types of techniques. In this chapter, we have discussed about certain uses and common drawbacks of e-DNA and also emphasized some newer additions to this technology to make this technology even more useful.