Environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques using DNA fragments in the water have recently been developed to investigate distributions and abundance/biomass of aquatic organisms. The eDNA technique is based on analyzing the DNA fragments in the collected water, thus unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, drone) would be useful to collect the water for eDNA, consequently may allow us to extend eDNA survey spatially and temporally. Here, we developed a new bleachable gears of water collection by UAV with considering to avoid the DNA contamination.
To test the performance and contamination risk of UAV water sampling for eDNA survey, we performed the water sampling in a dam reservoir to detect the eDNA of two fish species with comparing water sampling from boat, and investigated the contamination using the blank samples. From our testing, we found that our UAV water sampling had similar performance with water sampling by boat. Also, we did not detect any positive signals in all blank samples, including UAV sampling, transporting, filtering, and PCR blanks. Our UAV method can be applied to investigate species distributions using eDNA, and the combinations of UAV technologies, including remote and thermal sensing, can provide us efficient environmental monitoring in various types of water bodies.