CNR-ITEM COLLECTION: MICROBIAL RESOURCES FOR FOOD BIO-ECONOMY

In recent years a rising common concern is looking at biodiversity concept with a new sight, attempting to evaluate its economical value. In this respect, micro-organisms of agricultural interest play a key role in many aspects of food production e.g. soil fertility, crop nutrition, bio-control and bio-fertilizers. It is also important with regard to conservation of food products (toxins and pathogens) as well as in the production of processed foods such as milk, cheese, wine, oil, bread, meat etc. Therefore their presence and their biodiversity are instrumental for the maintenance of living organisms on earth. Conservation of microbial genetic resources and the safekeeping thereof plays a significant role in maintaining the microbial biodiversity for the further use in agriculture. The Agro Food Microbial Culture Collection "ITEM", includes more than 13,000 microbial strains preserved, among which about 7,000 are public (http://www.ispa.cnr.it/Collection/). ITEM is member of European Culture Collection Organization (ECCO) and of World Federation Culture Collection (WFCC); it gained the ISO 9001:2015 certification. All the strains are stored in duplicate: crio-preserved at - 150 °C and as fresh cultures at 4 °C. These are mainly isolated from the Mediterranean agro-food systems, including various microorganisms (fungi, yeasts and bacteria) of noteworthy pathological, toxicological and agro-food importance, such us Aspergillus, Alternaria, Beauveria, Fusarium, Penicillium, Trichoderma, Saccharomyces, Hanseniaspora, Lactobacillus, Oenococcus, Staphylococcus. Some of them are involved in plant and animal diseases, other are responsible for mycotoxins contamination of crop and food products, as well as for production of various secondary metabolites with different biological activities (i.e. antibiotics, entomo- , phyto- and zoo-toxins). Autochthonous yeast and bacteria (including probiotics) have also been preserved and characterized for their application in food/beverage industrial sectors (i.e. functional foods, typical Apulian wines, table olives and dairy products). This collection can be considered specifically a remarkable resource in the fight against mycotoxins: the increasing number of toxigenic fungi included in this collection ensures an original genetic source for biotechnological applications in several fields of research, contributing to knowledge improvement about fungal biology and strategies development for reducing mycotoxin contamination. Some of the multidisciplinary approaches have led to the biological, molecular and toxigenic characterization of Fusarium, Aspergillus, Penicillium and Alternaria species; as well as to the identification of multiple new toxigenic species (1). In addition, interesting results has been also obtained with microorganisms of agro-food and agro-industry interest such as: lactic bacteria as starter in production of yeast free bread (2) and wine (3); or Penicillium salamii for technological properties in seasoning of dried cured meat (4). Finally, also some bacterial and yeasts strains for olive fermentations (5) and probiotic Lactobacillus (6) from ITEM collection has been patented for industrial exploitation.