Agriculture

As custodian of the National Collection of Industrial Food and Marine Bacteria, and an International Depository Authority for patenting purposes, NCIMB is ideally placed to deliver a broad range of services to the agricultural, horticultural and plant breeding sectors.

In addition to providing a patent deposit service, we have developed a secure and confidential storage facility for biological materials including seeds, plant tissue cultures and bacteria.

Our microbiologists are experts in genotypic identification of unknown isolates and can confirm the presence or absence of key strains in microbial products such as probiotics or silage inoculants, as well as undertaking strain to strain comparison at 16S, MLST or whole genome resolution.  They can also provide next-generation sequencing (NGS) microbial community analysis (metagenomics) to investigate soil health.

The culture collection is an important genetic resource for researchers and industry around the globe and includes strains with a variety of potential applications including bioremediation, silage inoculants and probiotics production.

NCIMB’s analytical services department can carry out a suite of commonly required effluent tests.

We partner with companies, universities and research organisations to carry out research and development work.  We are particularly interested in research into new applications for microorganisms or improved microbial processes.