National Collection of Agricultural and Industrial Micro-organisms

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National Collection of Agricultural and Industrial Micro-organisms (NCAIM)


The predecessor of NCAIM, the Hungarian Microbiological Gene Bank (HMGB) was established in 1974. In the early years, the HMGB existed as a decentralised organisation. It consisted of some 30 research- and industrial laboratories that were grouped according to their special expertise such as plant protection, soil-, medical-, veterinary-, food microbiology and so on. The co-ordinating centre resided in our culture collection at the Department of Microbiology of the University of Horticulture and Food Science, Budapest.

Between 1983-1986 the Hungarian Biotechnology Program of National Community for Developments provided substantial support to our collection for development. In 1985 the Hungarian Government designated our collection as a national culture collection and the name of the collection was changed to National Collection of Agricultural and Industrial Micro-organisms (NCAIM). In the following year, on June 1. 1986 NCAIM acquired the status of an International Depositary Authority.

NCAIM became independent from the Department of Microbiology in January, 1994. Since then, the culture collection has been existed as a separate Department. Following several reorganisation and renaming of the university hosting our collection, NCAIM is currently affiliated with the Institute of Food Science and Technology of the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The main activities of NCAIM are to
  • accept and maintain patent deposits according to the regulations of the Budapest Treaty
  • accept and maintain safe deposits according to the Hungarian regulations
  • collect, preserve and maintain bacteria, filamentous fungi and yeasts with relevance for biotechnology, different areas of microbiology and to teaching
  • ex situ preservation of microorganisms representing Hungarian microbiodiversity
  • supply institutions, scientists, and students with cultures
  • offer identification services to the industry and research laboratories
  • provide data on NCAIM strains in form of online catalogue
  • provide consultations.
Cultures maintained in the open collection of NCAIM and its predecessor
  • Bacteria: 38 (1976), 218 (1986), 1431 (2021)
  • Filamentous Fungi: 92 (1976), 168 (1986), 333 (2021)
  • Yeast: 75 (1976), 470 (1986), 1858 (2021)
  • Total: 205 (1976), 856 (1986), 3586 (2021)
Patent deposits maintained at NCAIM according to the regulations of the Budapest Treaty (2021): 393
Safe deposits maintained at NCAIM (2021): 363

Research Activity at NCAIM
  • Study of survival of microorganisms preserved and maintained with different methods
  • Study of the yeast biota of natural and man-made habitats
  • Study of yeast biodiversity in foods and beverages
  • Classification and identification of yeast strains, description of new yeast species
  • Taxonomic study using modern molecular biology methods
  • Consultancy for hygiene in factories
  • Investigations of spoilage of food products, beverages etc. during transport and storage
  • molecular characterisation of industrial starter yeast cultures
Methods used at NCAIM
  • Barcoding DNA based identification of microorganisms
  • Morphological, physiological and biochemical characterisation of yeasts
Membership in International organisations
  • NCAIM has been a member of the World Federation of Culture Collections (WFCC) since 1976
  • NCAIM has actively been contributed to the European Culture Collection Organisation (ECCO) businesses since 1983
  • NCAIM has been a member of the UNESCO Network of Microbiological Resources Centres (MIRCEN) since 1989.