History of the ARS Culture Collection

The origin of the collection can be traced to 1904 when Dr. Charles Thom joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dr. Thom was assigned to investigate the microbiology of Roquefort and Camembert cheeses while working at the Connecticut Experiment Station and during the course of this research, he acquired several hundred mold cultures. When Dr. Thom relocated to Washington, D.C. in 1913, these strains went with him and, over the years, additional cultures were accessioned from both the U.S. and abroad. This collection, later known as the Thom and Church Collection in recognition of the contributions of Dr. Margaret B. Church, Dr. Thom's associate, was to serve as a source of strains not only for the ARS Culture Collection but also for the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC).

When the Northern Regional Research Laboratory (now the National Center For Agricultural Utilization Research) opened in 1940, the collection was formally established. Dr. Kenneth B. Raper (on the left) who had worked with Dr. Thom (on the right) was chosen to head the Culture Collection Section, a part of the Fermentation Division, and brought about two thousand of the Thom and Church cultures with him to Peoria. Other strains deposited in the NRRL collection during the same time were citric acid-producing aspergilli and a collection of bacterial strains. Many of these cultures had also originated from USDA research in the Washington area. Dr. L. J. Wickerham (pictured below), who also joined NRRL in 1940, brought a large collection of yeasts.

Since the 1940's, the accessioning of strains has been guided by overall ARS/USDA needs and the specific research aims of the curators and other staff members. Cultures have been obtained from individual scientists within and outside USDA, from other culture collections, from NCAUR microbial surveys of commodities and from natural habitats. Approximately a third of the yeast collection was isolated by Dr. Wickerham from samples of natural materials, frequently obtained while he was on vacation. Another source of strains has been the accessioning of whole collections that would otherwise have been lost to science because of retirement or changes in research programs of curators. These have included the Blakeslee collection of Mucorales, A. J. Mix's Taphrina isolates, the US Army Quartermaster (QM) Collection of filamentous fungi, the N. R. Smith Collection of aerobic spore-forming bacteria, the L. T. Leonard Collection of rhizobia, the International Streptomyces Project (ISP) collection from E. Shirling and the Waksman Collection of Actinomycetales.