Unlocking herbaria biodiversity using a QR code

 

Despite the relative ease with which DNA can now be sequenced in large quantities, scientists must first extract that DNA from an organism, often relying on vast numbers of specimens in museums and herbaria, or collections of plant specimens. With more than 250,000 species in the plant kingdom alone, the acquisition and documentation of specimen material is the most time-consuming and error-prone process in large studies.

In a paper published in Applications in Plant Sciences, U.S. National Science Foundation-funded researchers automated the collecting process by using a combination of unique object identifiers, QR codes and citizen science.

A unique object identifier is assigned and physically attached to each herbarium voucher, and the specimen is photographed with the identifier clearly visible.

By itself, this digitization of specimen information with unique object identifiers will be a valuable tool for researchers and will ultimately complement the effort underway in museums around the world to digitize collections. But the researchers took the next step.

QR codes were assigned to each specimen to further streamline data collection. This meant that when extracting and amplifying DNA in the lab, the researchers no longer had to manually enter specimen data into spreadsheets. Instead, that information was automatically populated when the biologists scanned a QR code.