Roles

• Isolate and solicit fungal cultures of scientific interest. 

• Catalogue culturable fungi and annotate the accessions through imaging and other methods. 
• Preserve living cultures by freeze-drying and freezing in liquid nitrogen or by other methods. 
• Identify, verify and characterize isolates using classical and molecular techniques. 
• Prepare herbarium specimens consisting of dried colonies to back-up the living cultures. 
• Distribute cultures to researchers and assist them to select strains.
• Provide professional advice and personal service customized to individual user needs.
• Archive strain data in a database and disseminate information to users through online and print catalogues.
• Educate through academic teaching of undergraduate and graduate students, scientific workshops and individual professional training.
• Maintain high quality assurance standards for a microbial collection.
• Cooperate with other collections through participation in the World Federation of Culture Collections (WFCC) and the World Data Centre for Microorganisms (WDCM), Canadensys and other networks.
• Maintain a research program with a focus on systematics, medical and veterinary mycology, indoor air quality and culture collection management.