Establishment of “Institute of Microbial Culture Collection of Pakistan (IMCCP)” at National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC), Islamabad, Pakistan

In Pakistan, long term preservation of microbes is a neglected subject. The importance of microbes in biotechnological, agricultural and industrial applications has pushed many Institutes to collect the indigenous beneficial microbes from various ecological zones of Pakistan. However, most of the strains collected by various labs were either stocked in glycerol as un-identified strains or abolished with time due to contamination or loss of interest of researchers at end of the project. Recently, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) took an initiative to start working on identification and preservation of economically important bacterial strains from Pakistani ecology. In this regard, PARC established “Institute for Microbial Culture Collection of Pakistan (IMCCP)” for preservation of microbial bio-asset of Pakistan (www.parc.gov.pk/index.php/en/imccp-home).

This institute aims at managing repository of microorganisms as “National Culture Collection of Pakistan (NCCP)”. It is first time in the history of Pakistan that PARC scientists identified several novel species of bacteria, which are available for distribution to scientific community under MTA with our Institute:

• Cellulomonas pakistanensis sp. nov., (validated – 2014);

• Sphingobacterium pakistanensis sp. nov., (validated – 2014);

• Bacillus pakistanensis sp. nov., (validated – 2014);

• Lysinibacillus pakistanensis sp. nov., (validated – 2014);

• Lysinibacillus composti sp. nov., (validated – 2014);

• Deinococcus citri sp. nov., (validated – 2014);

• Acinetobacter pakistanensis sp. nov., (validated – 2015);

• Kushneria pakistanensis sp. nov., (validated – 2015);

• Alcaligenes pakistanensis sp. nov., (validated – 2015);

• Bacillus malikii sp. nov. (published – 2015)

NCCP will serve as a microbial gene bank and will play an important role in offering services not only to preserve microorganisms using techniques that maintain viability, purity, and important characteristics of microorganisms, but also to supply high quality microorganisms for use in teaching, research and industrial applications. The facility for preservation of microbial strains can be availed by various scientists working in teaching, research and industry following the Best Practice Guidelines of the OECD (2001) and information exchange taking into account national and international requirements. NCCP will provide services on commercial basis for identification of microbes using 16S rRNA gene sequence of unknown strains to all stakeholders working in the fields of microbiology, pathology, biotechnology and industries related to these areas by following national international laws and regulations. NCCP will further characterize any potential candidate novel strain that can be delineated as a novel species from Pakistani ecology using polyphasic taxonomic approach. The institute is establishing facilities for providing services to scientific community to meet the minimum standards for describing novel taxa from Pakistani ecology.