The Sardinian Culture Collection of Algae (SCCA): Ex situ conservation of biodiversity and future technological applications

The Sardinian Culture Collection of Algae (SCCA) at Interdepartmental Center of Environmental Science and Engineering (University of Cagliari) is represented by over 100 microalgal authentic strains. Cultures derived from the original type material are maintained and assigned to Cyanophyta, Chlorophyta, Charophyta, Ochrophyta and Euglenophyta, respectively. The main characteristic of this collection is that all the strains are from Sardinia region. In fact, the primary mission of SCCA is to accomplish the isolation, identification, characterization, selection and in vitro cultivation of photosynthetic microorganisms from several habitats of interest in Sardinia. The strains in this collection will provide an extremely useful source of algal strains from Sardinia which can be exploited for laboratory experimentation and future technological applications.