Ch. 9— Maintaining Bioiogical Diversity in the United States • 243 



suffering from financial cutbacks (24]. Fund- 

 ing from USDA has been reduced or redirected 

 to other areas at the expense of the network 

 of archival collections (table 9-6). The result is 

 a diminished capacity to maintain the record- 

 keeping, authentication, and taxonomic charac- 

 terization necessary for a collection. Expansion 

 of existing collections is restricted by such fi- 

 nancial constraints. 



State Collections 



No organized State efforts to collect and 

 maintain microbial diversity, apart from spe- 

 cialized collections, seem to exist. The many 

 specialized collections that exist at State univer- 

 sities and colleges are typically the responsi- 

 bility of individual scientists. Some have gained 

 institutional support and achieved national sig- 

 nificance. Pennsylvania State University sup- 

 ports the major U.S. collection oi Fusarium spe- 

 cies, a plant fungus of major interest to breeders 



(7). Such efforts commonly depend on the con- 

 tinued interests and abilities of individuals who 

 initiated them. 



Unless sources of support and personnel are 

 available, institutional commitments to micro- 

 bial collections, where they exist, may not con- 

 tinue after key individuals leave, retire, or die— 

 a problem noted earlier with regard to agricul- 

 tural plant germplasm collections. When the 

 curator of an extensive collection of Rhizobium 

 germplasm died in 1975, his university was un- 

 able to provide future management for the ex- 

 tensive collection— at that time considered the 

 richest collection in the world of soil bacteria 

 in this group (24). It would have been lost had 

 it not been acquired by the University of Ha- 

 waii as part of a U.S. Agency for International 

 Development (USAID) research project in 1976. 



It was not until 1981 that the university agreed 

 to accept responsibility to maintain the collec- 

 tion in perpetuity as part of an international 



Table 9-6.— Microbial Culture Collections in the United States 

 With More Than 1,000 Accessions 



Number of 

 Collection Sponsor cultures 



Living resource: 



American type culture collection Private 27,630 



(Roci<ville, MD) 



Reference and archival: 



Northern Regional Research Center Government 63,000 



(Peoria, IL) 



USDA Rhizobium Culture Center Government 1,200 



(Beltsville, MD) 



Neisseria Repository, School of Public Health Government 1,700 



(Berkeley, CA) 



Neisseria Reference Laboratory Government 30,000 



(Seattle, WA) 



NiFTAL Rhizobium Germplasm Resource Government and 2,000 



(Paia, HI) university 



Plasmid Reference Center Government and 2,000 



(Stanford, CA) university 



Education and research: 



Fungal Genetics Stock Center Government 7,755 



(Areata, CA) 



L.L. Collection Waksman Institute of Microbiology 



(Piscataway, NJ) University 3,070 



Industry: 



Microbial and Fermentation Products Research Industry 66,060 



(Indianapolis, IN) 



Upjohn Culture Collection Industry 7,755 



(Kalamazoo, Ml) 



SOURCE; V F McGowen and V.B.D. Skerman, World Directory of Collections of Cultures of Microorganisms (Brisbane, Austra- 

 lia: World Data Center, 1982), 



