Building More Resilient Culture Collections: A Call for Increased Deposits of Plant-Associated Bacteria

Biological collections preserve our past, while helping protect our future and increase future knowledge. Plant bacterial culture collections are our security for domestic and global biosecurity. This feature article will provide an introduction to the global position of plant bacterial collections. The role of collections in monitoring plant pathogenic bacteria will be explored through the presentation of five cases studies. These case studies demonstrate why culture collections were imperative for the outcome in each situation. We discuss what we believe should be the best practices to improve microbial preservation and accessioning rates, and why plant bacterial culture collections must increase deposits to be prepared for future emerging pathogens. This is not only the case for global culture collections, but on a much bigger scale, our future scientific successes, our biosecurity decisions and responses, and our knowledge are contingent upon preserving our valuable bacterial strains. It is hoped that once you read this article, you will see the need to deposit your strains in registered public collections and make a concerted effort to build better bacterial culture collections with us.