New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS): The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on Wednesday apprised about a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in June this year between the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) and the International Barcode of Life (iBOL).

The MoU will enable the ZSI to participate in global level programmes such as Bioscan and Planetary Biodiversity Mission, among others.

"The ZSI and the iBOL have come together for further efforts in DNA barcoding, a methodology for rapidly and accurately identifying species by sequencing a short segment of standardised gene regions and comparing individual sequences to a reference database," said the Centre in a statement.

Union Minister Prakash Javadekar extended the cabinet's nod to the proposal in a press briefing here.

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 the analytical protocols needed to use the reference library to inventory, assess, and describe biodiversity.

ZSI is a subordinate organisation under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change while iBOL is a Canadian not-for-profit corporation.