Published date: 27 November 2020
Closed opportunity - This means that the contract is currently closed. The buying department may be considering suppliers that have already applied, or no suitable offers were made.
Contract summary
Industry
Environmental services - 90700000
Location of contract
PE1 1JY
Value of contract
£11,000 to £15,000
Procurement reference
C20-0382-1504
Published date
27 November 2020
Closing date
18 December 2020
Closing time
1pm
Contract start date
4 January 2021
Contract end date
19 March 2021
Contract type
Service contract
Procedure type
Open procedure (below threshold)
Any interested supplier may submit a tender in response to an opportunity notice.
This procedure can be used for procurements below the relevant contract value threshold.
Contract is suitable for SMEs?
No
Contract is suitable for VCSEs?
No
Description
The overall project aim is to contribute to greater use of DNA-based methods for monitoring species and ecosystems by environmental public bodies. This project will focus particularly on metabarcoding, and aims to improve end user understanding and awareness of:
• What guidance documents and standards for using metabarcoding in environmental exist and what the strengths and weaknesses of these documents are
• Why metabarcoding results can differ from conventional methods, and potential approaches to mitigation where these differences may arise from error or bias in metabarcoding.
DNA-based methods for detecting and identifying species have many potential applications within the Defra group of organisations (APHA, Defra, CEFAS, Environment Agency, Forest Research, JNCC, Kew, Marine Management Organisation, Natural England). These include surveillance for invasive or rare species, characterising communities to assess the condition of protected sites, understanding the effects of management interventions, and describing ecosystem functioning and resilience. However, operational use by public bodies faces several challenges. To contribute to addressing these challenges, Defra have established a Centre of Excellence (CoE) to support projects that will help facilitate greater uptake of DNA-based methods for monitoring species and ecosystems. The CoE brings together expertise and interests from across the Defra group of organisations to identify and tackle shared priorities through a series of projects.
As with all environmental monitoring carried out by public bodies, practical implementation of DNA-based methods requires agreed guidelines and protocols that give confidence the results are robust and are spatially and temporally comparable. However, whilst CoE organisations are aware of and have contributed to several existing guidelines and protocols for using DNA in monitoring, there is less knowledge of documents developed by other organisations - particularly in relation to metabarcoding. A better understanding amongst end users of what metabarcoding guidelines and standards exist would therefore be beneficial for several reasons:
• Brings together key resources to make it easier to find relevant documents
• Provides opportunities to learn from existing guidelines
• Avoids duplicating effort or producing conflicting documents
• Allows new guidance documents to be targeted to key remaining gaps
A related important knowledge gap for several CoE organisations is understanding how, when, and why metabarcoding results can differ from conventional methods. Understanding the sources of error and bias in metabarcoding, and being able to distinguish these from situations in which metabarcoding and conventional methods give different results because each samples a different portion of the community, is particularly important for end user interpretation of results from DNA-based methods.
More information
Attachments
-
- C20-0382-1504 ITT.zip
- Tender notice
- Reviewing Metabarcoding Guidelines and Understanding Sources of Error. ITT Documents
About the buyer
Address
Monkstone House,City Road
PETERBOROUGH
PE11JY
England
Telephone
01733 866894
Website
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Closing: 18 December 2020, 1pm
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