MICROALGAL CULTURE COLLECTION: FUNDAMENTAL PLATFORM FOR ALGAL RESEARCH AND INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

Microalgae are unicellular photosynthetic micro-organisms, and are regarded as an important resource for scientific research and algal industry. The Freshwater Algae Culture Collection at the Institute of Hydrobiology (FACHB-Collection) is a professional platform for the reservation and service of living algae in China, mainly maintaining freshwater algal species, and a small number of marine and brackish species as well. It was formally established in 1973, and was merged into National Aquatic Biological Resource Center in 2019. The FACHB-Collection currently holds more than 3400 strains, belonging to 169 genera and 9 phyla. It dispatches over 2500 strains to domestic and foreign users every year, and offers the technical consultation for algal identification, isolation and culturing. In an era of ever-increasing demands for high quality and diversified living algal strains, algal culture collections are playing active and irreplaceable roles in the algal study and algal commercialization. The paper introduces the foundation and development of major algal culture collections in the world, and then briefly summarizes the history of algal culture collections in China, emphasizing the driving forces promoting the establishment and development of algal resources collections with diverse purposes. We detail the major scientific and technological progresses in FACHB-Collection in the context of new discovery of species, methodological improvement in axenic culture and cryopreservation, and breeding and application of economically important species. Finally, the roles and challenges of algal culture collections as BRC in the future are analyzed to better serve algal study and algal industries.