Culture collection of algae
Over a span of 50 years, NIVA has built up a significant collection of algae cultures. NIVA provides access to these cultures for use in research, education and commercial applications.
Norway has long tradition in scientific investigations with algae, with Norwegian scientists being early promoters of algal experiments. In 1964, Olav M. Skulberg and Randi Skulberg established the NIVA Culture Collection of Algae (NIVA-CCA).
NIVA's culture collection receives support from the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment, being designated to hold a national reference collection of algae. The collection is registered in the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC) and the European Culture Collections Organization (ECCO).
Since the beginning, NIVA has done extensive research on algae characteristics, growth conditions and applications. At present, the collection plays a key role in ensuring biodiversity through ex situ conservation of singular organisms in culture. The strain NIVA-CHL1 was the first culture in the collection and is among the most widely used test algae in the world.
Fifty years after NIVA-CHL1, the continuation of the work laid down by the Skulbergs has resulted in shelves stocking over 900 different strains of algae, several of which are unique to NIVA-CCA. NIVA has made these strains available to others for a long time, but with the new web shop the strains are easier to get hold of than ever before.
- The new web shop enables fast and easy access to almost all the strains in our collection. I welcome researchers, businesses and educators worldwide to have a look at the new web shop and look forward to our first order, NIVA-CCA curator Camilla Hagman says.
The shop supports free text search for strains, and also has an algae selector. In the selector, customers can start looking for algae strains by first choosing their desired class and genus.