ISO 9001 Certification for the University Microbial Collection

The microbial collection MBDS-UNISSCC, established as part of the MBDS project (Microbial Biodiversity of Sardinia, funded by the Ministry of Agricultural, Food, and Forestry Policies - Mipaaf with funds from Law 194/2015), carried out in collaboration with AGRIS Sardegna and the University of Cagliari, has been certified according to the UNI EN ISO 9001:2015 standard since December 18, 2023. This certification was made possible through the funding of the SUS_MIRRI project (National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) – MISSION 4 "Education and Research" - Component 2, "From Research to Enterprise" – Investment Line 3.1 "Fund for the establishment of an integrated system of research and innovation infrastructures"). The collection is internationally recognized and is a member of the World Federation Culture Collections, the European Culture Collections Organization, and is a section of the Regional Germplasm Bank for agriculture and food of the Sardinia Region (Regional Law No. 3 of March 9, 2022 - Stability Law 2022, art 9, paragraph 4). The scientific supervisor is Professor Marilena Budroni.

The microbial collection, located at the "A. Capriotti" Institute of General and Applied Microbiology in Viale Italia 39, Sassari, within the Department of AGRICULTURE, involves not only microbiologists but also the plant pathology research group of the Department of Agriculture.

The purposes of the collection are the isolation, characterization, maintenance, and conservation of pure microorganisms and/or microbiomes of agri-food and environmental interest. The MBDS - UNISSCC collection preserves 319 strains, including 62 filamentous fungi belonging to different Fusarium species, 181 yeasts, and 76 bacteria isolated from food and environmental matrices such as sourdoughs, olives and olive oil, milk and cheese, grapes, wine and must, fish, mollusks, meat, but also soil, and by-products of beer processing such as spent grains and wastewater.