Global commodity supply chains continue to face persistent vulnerabilities related to fraud, substitution, provenance manipulation, and weak verification of chain-of-custody claims. Existing traceability systems—ranging from paper-based documentation to digital ledgers and blockchain architectures—have improved the persistence and accessibility of records but have not fundamentally resolved a core structural weakness: they authenticate representations of commodities more effectively than the commodities themselves. As a result, false or manipulated identities introduced at early stages of the supply chain may be preserved with high fidelity throughout downstream processes. This paper advances a conceptual and operational framework termed Bio-Digital Supply Chain Integrity (BDSCI), which reframes supply-chain trust as a physical-to-digital identity problem rather than a documentation problem. The framework integrates three interdependent layers: (1) intrinsic or near-intrinsic commodity authentication using portable nanopore sequencing and related scientific identification methods, (2) edge-based artificial intelligence for localized, real-time analysis and decision support, and (3) permissioned blockchain systems for tamper-resistant, auditable, and cross-organizational record preservation. Building on advances in portable genomics (Jain et al., 2016; Deamer et al., 2016), edge computing (Shi et al., 2016; Satyanarayanan, 2017), and blockchain-enabled supply-chain governance (Saberi et al., 2019; Köhler & Pizzol, 2022), the paper proposes that trustworthy digital provenance must be anchored in materially grounded evidence generated from the commodity itself or from tightly associated environmental or biological signatures. This evidence is transformed into structured verification outputs at the edge and cryptographically preserved within a distributed system, forming a persistent and evidence-based digital twin. The paper contributes in three ways. First, it provides a conceptual integration of molecular authentication, edge intelligence, and distributed ledgers into a unified evidentiary model. Second, it develops a lifecycle-based operational workflow linking source verification, transit monitoring, and destination reauthentication. Third, it evaluates governance, legal, and implementation challenges, including reference-library authority, standardization, interoperability, cost, and ethical considerations. While the BDSCI framework is not universally applicable across all commodities, it offers a modular and adaptable approach for high-risk, high-value, and provenance-sensitive supply chains. The central conclusion is that supply-chain integrity becomes substantially more defensible when digital claims are continuously anchored to scientifically verifiable evidence rather than relying solely on documents, labels, or immutable but unverified records.
R.K.D. Kho (Wed,) studied this question.