New genetic tests could help crack down on illegal food or timber trade, fight malaria or even give clues to how to stop bird strikes with planes, scientists said on Friday.
Experts have identified DNA "barcodes" - named after the black and white lines that identify products in a supermarket - of more than 31,000 species of animals and plants against 12,700 species in 2005 in a fast-growing branch of science.
"We're building up a reference library of species," said David Schindel of the US Smithsonian Institution who is executive secretary of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life. About 350 barcode experts will meet from September 18-20 in Taipei.
A snippet of genetic material, such as a sliver of fish or sawdust from a plank of wood, can help identity a species by a DNA "barcode" unique to each species in a laboratory process taking a few hours and costing about $2.
Barcoding experts are working with regulators such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to seek applications for the database such as curbing illegal imports, fighting mosquitoes or helping understand bird migration routes.
Barcoding could help, for instance, identify a tiny worm on a shipment of bananas and so settle a dispute about whether it was a harmless pest just picked up at the port of entry or a more dangerous imported species.
The FDA warned in May that a shipment labelled monkfish from China might contain a type of puffer fish that can contain a deadly toxin if badly prepared. "Barcoding could help identify the fish quickly," Schindel said. The same could apply to checking whether a wooden table, for instance, was from an endangered hardwood species.
The scientists hope to identify 500,000 species in coming years. So far the databases are far from complete - with about 20 percent of the world's 10,000 species of birds and 10 percent of the estimated 35,000 marine and freshwater fishes. Extracting DNA barcodes from plants is proving harder than for animals.
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