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Group(s) of biological resources stored in the collection: bacteria, archaea, yeasts, filamentous fungi, oomycota, other fungus-like organisms.

Established in 1947, CABI’s living collection holds around 30,000 fungi and 2,000 bacteria representing 6,500 species from over 145 countries. The collection represents CABI’s historic, global scientific activities and has strains relevant to plant health, soil fertility, biological control, sanitary and phytosanitary applications, environmental bioremediation and ecosystem reclamation.

CABI is a leading provider of microbial services specialising in microbial resource management and identification of microbes. With over 100 years of scientific endeavour behind us, we combine a wealth of experience and resources with the latest techniques to provide a rapid and reliable service. Summary of services: Culture supply, Preservation of fungi and bacteria, Patent deposit, Safe deposit, Strain stability testing, Novel product screening and extract supply, Training (Preservation, BRC management, Microbiology, Microbial Identification).

CABI undertakes both commercial and publicly funded research projects in a number of areas and is always happy to collaborate in multi-partner initiatives. Recent research areas include:

Microbially derived novel product screening and assay

Enzymes from low temperature environments

Cryopreservation technology

Molecular Microbial Taxonomy

BRC networking & management

Microbiome sample cryopreservation and functionality testing                   

CABI is currently participating in several microbial resource related projects including the lead in the UK Crop Microbiome Cryobank project developing a unique, exploitable and integrated resource that will provide the biological and bioinformatic tools to enable the development of solutions to improve soil and crop health; generating a validated sequence resources database, ‘AgMicrobiome Base’;  funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). CABI is also providing fungi for the Darwin Tree of Life Project, led by the Wellcome Sanger Institute, plans to read the genomes of all known species of animals, plants, fungi and protists in Britain and Ireland.

Quality assurance: The culture collection is a member of The UK Biological Resource Centre Network (UKBRCN https://www.ukbrcn.org/), is a UNESCO Microbial Resource Centre (MIRCEN), and an International Depository Authority (IDA) within the Budapest Treaty (1977).

Our culture collection operates:

To the World Federation for Culture Collection (WFCC) guidelines for culture collections

To the UKNCC Quality Management System

To the Common Access to Biotechnology Resources Information (CABRI) Guidelines

In the spirit of the Convention on Biological Diversity, CABI has published its Access and Benefit Sharing Policy on line to comply with the CBD and its instrument the Nagoya Protocol and operates to CABI ABS best practice.