Home Page

Reports
"The International Bank of Glomeromycota"

1. The state of the art (reporter Conchi Azcon de Aguilar, SP)

V. Gianinazzi-Pearson and J. C. Dodd made a summary about the history of the BEG and the circumstances that justified the change from the BEG to the IBG.

The BEG (Banque Européenne des Glomales) was created in 1993 as an initiative under the COST Action 8.10. Since then it has been functioning as an international reference collection of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), within the framework of COST Actions 8.21 and 8.38.

The BEG history can be summarized as follows:

1991: During the COST Action 8.10 meeting hold in Einsieldeln, the decision to create the BEG was taken.

1993: The 1st Study Contract was established under the EU – COST Action 8.10 and C. Walker was commissioned to make a database for compiling registered cultures.

1994: A germplasm collection was initiated in the INRA-Dijon, creating the infrastructure for AMF cultures and distribution under the supervision of V. Gianianzzi-Pearson. Also in this year the 2nd Study Contract was set up to develop an Expert System for CD with ETI (Amsterdam) by S. Rosendahl.

1995: Under the EU – COST 8.10 the 3rd Study Contract was set up to study the feasibility to establish the BEG (J.C. Dodd)

1996: Under the COST Action 8.21 an on-line BEG homepage was launched by J.C. Dodd. It included a WWW-based ecological database and procedures for culture registration and inoculum requests.

1997-2000: A BEG-Net project (The European Bank of Glomales: a European Stock Centre and Genetic Archive for biotechnologically important non-culturable symbiotic fungi, coordinated by J.C. Dodd) was funded by the EC (EU – Biotechnology). It was decided that AMF Stock Centres will be established in different laboratories: central germplasm collection in Dijon and satellite collections in Canterbury, Copenhagen, Pisa and Finland.

1999: COST 8.21: A booklet listing AMF in COST laboratories was produced by J.C. Dodd and V. Gianinazzi-Pearson, with the collaboration of all COST laboratories.

2000-2003: A project (INCO-Dev, MYCHINTEC coordinated by V. Gianinazzi-Pearson) was funded by the EU. As a consequence, new BEG pages and links with a Chinese database (CAMF) have been established.

2001-2002: BEG web pages, initially established in English, were also translated into Spanish and Chinese.

2002-2003: Due to the incorporation of many AMF from all over the world, and the fact that AMF were asigned to a newly raised phylum (Glomeromycota), BEG was changed into IBG (International Bank of Glomeromycota): BEG pages were changed and a French version was incorporated.

At the moment 210 isolates are registered in the IBG/BEG and 20 of these AMF cultures are available for scientific purposes. Among the available isolates, there are species of Glomus (10), Acaulospora (4), Gigaspora (2) and Scutellospora (3). The origin of the AMF isolates registered in IBG/BEG is PR China (45), Switzerland and UK (22), Spain (16), Finland (15), Denmark (13) and Czech Rep. (12). There are also isolates coming from Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, New Zealand, Philippines, United Arab Emirates, USA, Venezuela, Mongolia, Portugal, Kenya, Syria, Ireland, Italy, Taiwan, Honduras, Sweden, Nigeria, Russia, Slovenia, Colombia and Guatemala.

BEG have received more that 500 AMF requests, coming mainly, but not exclusively, from European countries. Most of the requests corresponded to Glomus species.

Additionally, BEG/IBG has represented a world recognized code for AM fungi accredited in scientific journals. In short it is the only public domain data source of ecological and genetic (Genbank aside) for these fungi globally.

The present BEG/IBG coordinator (J.C. Dodd) informed about his decision to resign for personal reasons. Different questions about the future of the BEG/IBG were then discussed: (i) Should IBG close or continue? (ii) Who should take the responsibility of the coordinating role? (iii) Can its relevance to the Global Mycorrhizal Community be improved?

The general conclusion was that it has been a successful world database and it should continue functioning. It was also discussed the possibility of updating the booklet listing AMF in COST 8.38 laboratories, to know about (i) the maintenance of the AMF cultures included in the previous booklet and (ii) the incorporation of new isolates.

Concerning the future of the Expert System, S. Rosendahl explained the use and advantages of an Expert System (ES): it is a system used to identify an organism, but the user does not need to be an expert.

He explained the functioning of the ES he has developed to indentify AMF. It is nearly finished and will be available very soon, probably next year. It will contain about 50 species and will contain identification keys for each genera. He made a demostration of the use of the ES. When ready, the ES will be available on a CD version and probably also on-line.

P. Franken summarized the information available on the genetic archives in the IBG. The basic idea behind is to include a list of sequences for each IBG isolate, to facilitate tagging and tracking for monitoring. The problem is that there are too many sequences for manual operation. Different proposals were presented. To construct (i) an IBG database for rRNA sequences, which will allow to design isolate specific primers; and (ii) an IBG database for EST sequences, which will allow to make countig with the different ESTs. For the future it would be interesting to have an IBG database for phylogenetically relevant sequences. It would be also very convenient to have a EST database for G. intraradices, that would complement the G. intraradices genomic database derived from the genome sequencing project recently approved in USA. The advantages of having a database for AMF ESTs was discussed. There was a general agreement in the need to develop these databases.

S. Declerk presented the possible link between the IBG and GINCO. GINCO (Glomeromycota IN vitro Collection) is an international collection of AM fungi maintained under in vitro conditions. The progresses in the in vitro cultures of AM fungi was summarized and the advantages (purity of strains, easy control of strain quality, non-destructive monitoring, adequete for molecular biology studies, etc…) and desadvantages discussed. At present most of the AM fungi succesfully cultured in vitro correspond to Glomus (59 %) and Gigaspora (18 %). GINCO is maintained both in Belgium (MUCL) and Canada (CCFC) with the objectives to provide the scientific community and industrials with high-quality, contaminant-free, in vitro produced AM fungi. Among the services offered are the growing diversity in strains available, the deposit of strains, the update of recent developments in in vitro culture techniques, a network of experts in the in vitro cultivation domain sustaining the research activities and a forum for specific questions addressed to the collection staff and forwarded to the experts. The future of GINCO in terms of extending the AMF species list and the services was presented. The possible links with IBG/BEG by developing agreements on collaboration in terms of harmonisation of policies, exchange of material, in vitro culture of prominent IBG species, etc… and distribution by GINCO were discussed.

M. Giovannetti underlined the specificity of the IBG in relation to INVAM. She started by summarizing the aims, history and facilities of the INVAM (International Culture Collection of VA Mycorrhizal Fungi). The collection was initiated by Dr. N. C. Schenk, in the University of Florida. In 1985, the collection received funding from the National Science Foundation. After Dr. N. Schenck's retirement, 182 isolates in the collection were moved to West Virginia University and merged with a local collection maintained by Dr. J. Morton. At present, the collection includes 300-600 actively growing cultures, corresponding to 70 described and 45 undescribed species. Most of the isolates come from America (78 %) and about 10 % from Europe. The collection includes photographs of reference isolates of each species, together with photographs of type specimens. Since 1998, all photographic vouchers are saved as digital images. For each fungus, reference slides and vials containing spores are prepared. The collection includes a web site with availability of a large fungal database (1061 accessions, searched by INVAM Accession Number, genus or species name) and on-line species description.

A comparison of the deposits and facilities of IBG/BEG and INVAM was made. The specificity of the IBG concerning the non centralized, multicentric bank and the distinctive offer of services (free release, link to genetic databases, etc) was underlined. The possibility to establish a more strongly interconnected network of European lab collections of AMF was discussed.

2. The future of the IBG (Reporter Mauritz Vestberg, FIN)

During this session the future structure of the BEG/IBG was discussed. Five options for the future activities were recognized:

1. Activities may go on as they are presently with loose voluntary agreements between scientists devoted to the subject
2. A Memorandum of understanding could be worked out between stable institutes
3. Legalization of BEG activities
4. Copying of the INVAM model meaning that all activities are centralized in one place
5. Joining with other networks, for example GINCO

It was decided that activities of BEG will be developed in the direction of point 2 and 3 of the list above. BEG has a strength as a “bank without walls”. It is therefore no solution to copy the INVAM model. The word “BEG” included in isolate codes is an important international brand that has successfully been developed during 10 years. It is therefore very important to keep this name for recognition of fungal strains originating from the bank. As it is, the bank has no legal identity, so actions will be taken for achieving such status. This will open better possibilities for funding from EU or international funds. As a first step, a memorandum of understanding shall be established for participating organisations in the BEG. In the following stage, the possibility of finding funds for BEG through the ERA-NET will be considered. A preliminary list of potential institutes and universities that might have an interest in signing such a memorandum of understanding include INRA (France), MTT (Finland), IBOT (Czech Republic), IGZ (Germany), DISTA (Italy), IB (Denmark), CSIC (Spain), DCBA (Italy). It was agreed that Manuela Giovannetti writes the first draft of a memorandum of understanding.

The structure of the BEG committee will be changed as John Dodd is no longer the coordinator and the registrator of the bank.The new committee is:

Miroslaw Vosatka, chairman of FEMFiP (Federation of European Mycorrhizal Fungi inocula Producers) gave an overview of the activites of this newly formed association. The FEMFiP has currently 8 members who are:

- Biorize, France
- PlantWorks, United Kingdom
- Mycotech, Germany
- SYTEN, Spain
- Eurotuber, Hungary
- INOQ, Germany
- Mycosym, Switzerland
- Symbio-M, Czech republic

According to M. Vosatka, there are several possible links between inoculum producers and IBG:

Ø Producer needs to provide as much as possible information and also internationally recognised reference for fungal strains used in products.
Ø Testing inocula and certification would be easier for FEMFiP if all strains used in products will be registered in IBG.
Ø Possible involvment of laboratories associated with IBG in independent testing of inocula quality
Ø The international recognition of IBG is certainly useful for reputation of mycorrhizal inocula

It was also suggested that IBG should act more actively as a link between the scientific community and the mycorrhizal industry. IBG could for example arrange internationl workshops and training about different aspects in mycorrhizal research. The future activity of IBG in relation to science and mycorrhizal industry can be presented in the following way.

3. The use of BEG references for the years 1999 – 2003

3.1. New Phytologist (Reporter Guido Lingua, I)

Analysis of the number of papers published in 1999 and 2003.

The total number of published papers was counted (excluding letters and commentaries; in practise only research articles and reviews were considered). The papers concerning AM were numerated and checked for the using of the BEG code.

The pdf files of the papers using the BEG code have been saved for any further use.

The most interesting result emerging from the analysis of data is not the variation in the use of the BEG code (which remained approximately constant), but the reduction in the number of papers concerning arbuscular mycorrhiza (about 30% less). The reduction was shown both in absolute and relative terms, as the total number of papers increased.

3.2. Others journals

4. Submitted sequences on AMF to gene banks (Reporter Philippe Franken, D)

558 entries with AMF BEG isolates
8520 total entries (4367 from G. intraradices DAOM 181602)