- National Collection of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria
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The National Collection of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria (NCPPB) is a UK Government owned, non-profit-making biological culture collection which specialises in acquiring, authenticating, preserving, and distributing plant pathogenic reference bacteria, and DNA for research in the life sciences. It is housed at the Food and Environment Research Agency which was formerly known as The Central Science Laboratory (CSL) which was an executive agency of the UK government department the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) until it became Fera on 1st April 2009.
The National Collection of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria culture collection is internationally recognised, and specialises in Bacteria which affect temperate and tropical crops, plants and plant produce (Plant pathogens). The NCPPB lies within the United Kingdom National Culture Collection (UKNCC) [1] European Culture Collections' Organisation(ECCO)[2] and World Federation of Culture Collections (WFCC) [3].
Contents
Purpose
The Collection exists primarily to preserve and maintain, for use by research and educational establishments and by industry, cultures of the world's bacterial plant pathogens and the bacteria closely associated with them. Bacteriophages useful for the determination of bacterial pathogens, and for the diagnosis of the bacterial diseases they cause and which are potential biocontrol organisms are also maintained.
The culture collection comprises some 3500 strains and includes all type strains and pathotype strains.It houses almost all bacterial plant pathogens and is one of the largest and most frequently used collections in the world for the deposition of reference and type strains of plant pathogenic bacteria.
It is a requirement of being a member of the EU that each country has laboratories specialising in plant health so that the spread of crop diseases is minimised. These laboratories require reference material with which to compare the suspected causal agents of crop diseases so that rapid identification is possible. Culture collections such as the NCPPB provide such reference material.
History
The bacterial culture collection has been maintained for over 60 years and is funded by the Governmental 'Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs' DEFRA (formerly MAFF [4]
In 1947 the National Collection of Type Cultures, at the Lister Institute, decided it should shed cultures not of direct interest to the medical sciences. The bacterial plant pathogens were combined with a collection at the Botany School, Cambridge, and the whole collection was maintained on behalf of the Agricultural Research Council until 1956.
This collection, of 200 cultures, was transferred to the Plant Pathology Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) at Harpenden in 1956, and in that year was recognised as a National Collection by the UK National Committee of the Commonwealth Collections of Micro-organisms. In 1988, the Plant Pathology Laboratory, now the Harpenden Laboratory, was incorporated along with other government departments, into the Central Science Laboratory (CSL), an executive agency of MAFF.
In 1996, the UK National Culture Collection (UKNCC) was formed with the NCPPB as a member and CSL, and the NCPPB together with some 3,500 strains, moved to purpose built laboratories near York, UK.
In 2002 MAFF became the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) where the NCPPB still continues its primary role of providing scientific support to the Plant Health Service.
Links with other collections
The NCPPB has close working links with several other international culture collections, including ATCC, and the USDA in the USA, ICMP in New Zealand, CFBP in France, BCCM/LMG in Belgium, IBSF in Brazil, DSMZ in Germany, and others. These culture collections frequently exchange cultures between themselves so that important reference strains are not lost to science and to assist in the distribution of strains for scientific research purposes.
A new National Fungal Culture Collection has been established in Georgia (Former Soviet Union) with assistance from the NCPPB. This new Collection is based at Kobuleti on the black sea.
References
External links
Categories:- Microbiology related organisations
- Organisations based in the United Kingdom
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