The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a Memorandum of Understanding between India's Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) and Canada's not-for-profit organisation International Barcode of Life (iBOL).
The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave its nod to the MoU, which was signed in June 2020 between ZSI, a subordinate organisation under Ministry of Environment, and iBOL, a statement said.
ZSI and iBOL have come together to further efforts in DNA barcoding, a methodology for rapidly and accurately identifying species by sequencing a short segment of standardized gene regions and comparing individual sequences to a reference database, it said.
iBOL is a research alliance involving nations that have committed both human and financial resources to enable expansion of the global reference database, the development of informatics platforms, and/or the analytical protocols needed to use the reference library to inventory, assess, and describe biodiversity.
The MoU will enable ZSI to participate in global level programmes like Bioscan and Planetary Biodiversity Mission, it added.