ITEM - Agro-Food Microbial Culture Collection. Microbial Biodiversity Preservation: a natural treasure for a great beauty

In recent years a rising common concern is looking at biodiversity concept with a new sight, attempting to evaluate its economical value, as ground step for supporting measures proposed by national governments and international committees. Although this utilitarian view applied to a complex concept could cause an underestimation of the true potential of biological resources, nowadays a wide spectrum of direct and indirect quantifiable values has been recognized as tightly correlated to biodiversity. Fifty percent of the living biomass on the planet is microbial and microorganisms provide an important source of genetic information for molecular biology and biotechnology. At this respect, the direct-use values is easily perceived and continuously growing thanks to the relevant contribution of biotechnologies, and the possibility to preserve biological resources through long-term conservation of genetic resources. Fungi play a major role in bio-regulatory systems in natural ecosystems and could represent an extraordinary source of new compounds, with a large range of secondary metabolites having biological activities of great ecological relevance, from crop protection to negative impact on humans and domesticated animals. The Agro-Food Microbial Culture Collection "ITEM" (http://server.ispa.cnr.it/ITEM/Collection/), joined to the work for years of researchers in the Institute of Sciences of Food Productions, allows to produce, purify, and characterize novel bioactive metabolites obtained by growing fungal pathogens belonging to several genera. Thousands strains belonging to toxigenic genera of Fusarium, Aspergillus, Alternaria, and Penicillium, represented a great biodiversity in the ITEM collection to deepen the knowledge on fungal biology and strategies development for reducing mycotoxin contamination. Yeast and lactic bacteria strains with peculiar properties has been also preserved and characterized for autochthonous industrial fermentation of typical Apulian wines, table olive and dairy products. Probiotic bacteria are applied for functional foods. A new species of Penicillium from dryed-meat has been isolated and characterized, with possible application for safe seasoning. In general, microorganisms of agro-food interest are preserved and may represent a new frontier of discovery of novel metabolites to be used as safe and environmentally friendly agrochemicals. ITEM take part of the Italian Network of Genetic Resource - BioGenRes (www.biogenres.cnr.it/); and of the European Project on Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure - MIRRI (www.mirri.org/).