Scaling up Biodiversity Genomics in Europe: From Fragmented Efforts to a Unified Infrastructure

Effective biodiversity policy depends on precise, high-volume data to characterise, monitor, and protect natural capital. Genomic technologies, along with taxonomic expertise, offer the resolution and scalability required to meet these legislative and management needs, with DNA barcoding enabling rapid species identification and whole-genome sequencing allowing for comprehensive assessment of genetic diversity. While these tools hold great promise for routine monitoring, their integration into policy frameworks has been limited..

The Biodiversity Genomics Europe (BGE) project was established in 2022 to accelerate the deployment of an integrated framework of genomic and taxonomic expertise. Through close collaboration among iBoL Europe, ERGA and CETAF networks, the initiative has connected distributed communities of taxonomists and genomic researchers. This cooperation has aligned European scientific output with global initiatives such as the International Barcode of Life and the Earth BioGenome Project, fostering a unified community of practice across the continent.

Significant obstacles, however, currently hinder widespread adoption. Divergent sampling strategies, wet-lab protocols, and data curation practices fragment the landscape and reduce interoperability. A particularly prominent challenge is the lack of comprehensive and standardised reference libraries for barcodes and genomes. As long as these baselines remain incomplete, genomic data cannot be interpreted with the confidence required for decision-making.

The BGE initiative addresses these issues by proposing to shift from simple European-wide coordination to a structural consolidation model. We argue for the need for a European research infrastructure to supply the services, tools, and standards needed to scale up operations. By organising a coordinated and inclusive system for knowledge production and application, we aim to muster the unique value of research groups, laboratory facilities and innovation hubs to reliably sustain the provision of high-quality biodiversity data necessary for evidence-based policy. In this talk, we summarise the work already carried out in the context of the BGE project and outline the steps ahead to raise the readiness levels of actors and stakeholders toward a distributed research infrastructure for biodiversity genomics and a genomically enabled biota in Europe.