Spanish Network of Microorganisms (REDESMI)

The Spanish Network of Microorganisms (REDESMI) emerges as an initiative of the Spanish Type Culture Collection (CECT) endorsed by the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA) through the Complementary Action ref. AC2013-00028. It is still ongoing thanks to the financing granted by the same entity through the Complementary Action ref. RMP2015-00001-00-00, on projects of permanent activities of microbial resources. It aims to connect researchers and national institutions that host collections of microorganisms, fundamentally of importance for agriculture and food, in order to combine efforts in the conservation, exploitation and recovery of the Spanish microbial resources. Such non-public culture collections are generally unknown to the scientific community, contain scattered microbial resources, difficult to access and, in many cases, are in danger of extinction. Because of their origin, conserved strains are of special importance for the agrifood sector and represent a great biotechnological potential to explore and exploit. Most of these collections have been generated from publicly funded projects and it would be highly desirable that the strains and information on them be available to the scientific community. The CECT is the only public collection of archaea, bacteria, yeasts and filamentous fungi in Spain, and is considered internationally as a Center for Microbial Biological Resources (mBRC) according to OECD criteria. Through REDESMI, the CECT makes available to research collections more than 50 years of experience in the management and conservation of microorganisms to safeguard Spanish microbial resources. Likewise, participation in REDESMI will facilitate the dissemination of Spanish resources at European level through the European infrastructure -FP7-INFRA-2012-312251-, in which the CECT participates and is currently completing the Preparatory Phase.

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