MP: InSacco - environmental monitoring system

A bottleneck with DNA based environmental surveillance is the sample preparation. The InSacco principle will simplify the sample preparation so that DNA analyses can be conducted on-site, enabling continuous measurements and data streaming. Good environmental surveillance systems are essential for developing sustainable aquaculture in Norway. Current approaches are based on inaccurate, expensive and subjective measurements. Modern DNA technology enables accurate and objective environmental surveillance to a fraction of the price than of the traditional approaches. InSacco will be a key contributor for the DNA revolution in environmental surveillance.

InSacco aims to provide a continuous environmental test system based on the InSacco principle that will avoid expensive and labour intense subjective methods, such as manual counting of sediment macroorganisms. InSaccos based eDNA typing of environmental bacteria may reduce the costs/time-use with more than 70 % compared to state-of-art subjective methods and allow deriving objective information that can directly be applied in decision making in environmental managements. There are currently no available approaches to monitor the environmental conditions for aquacultures located where sediments cannot be obtained and there is therefore an urgent need for new approaches to monitor these segments. The successful project will be immensely important for aquatic environmental monitoring and will support an entire industry/value chain.