Canadian Phycological Culture Centre (CPCC)

A complete list of cultures is available in PDF here.

Further information regarding ordering and payment options is found in the Ordering Info & Fees section.

Please read Terms & Conditions, prior to ordering.

Please read the section on Culture Conditions along with the section below on Culture Acclimation, prior to receiving your new cultures.

Culture Acclimation

Upon first receiving your cultures, bear in mind that they have undergone some shipping stress and will now need to acclimate to their new environment at your facility. Motile organisms in particular seem to be very vulnerable to shipping stress. Although your ultimate goal may be to produce higher growth rates, it would be best to attempt to reproduce our culturing conditions as closely as possible until the cultures are firmly established in their new home. Please contact the Technical Curator for details on the environmental conditions used for the strain you are purchasing. After unpacking your cultures, place the tubes into your growth area overnight to begin their adjustment to the new environmental conditions.

Except for certain "weedy" genera such as Chlorella and Pseudokirchneriella, great care must be taken to avoid loss of your new cultures. When you prepare the new subcultures from the shipping tubes, please examine the cultures microscopically to determine viability. A good rule of thumb is to use 2/3 of the liquid culture in duplicate while leaving the remaining 1/3 of the culture in the tube as a backup in case the first set of subcultures doesn't grow well.  Also, use a low dilution rate of approximately 1 part culture to 5 parts medium. For example, from a 15 mL liquid culture, prepare two new subcultures by diluting ~5 mL of the donor culture with ~20-25 mL of fresh medium. It is recommended that the duplicate vessels be placed in two different locations with similar environmental conditions in the event that one replicate grows while the other does not. Once these cultures are growing well, they may be scaled up further by adding ~10 mL of the donor culture to ~50 mL of medium with multiple replicates. Once these cultures are well-established in your facility, you may proceed with further scaling up of either volume and/or replicates, and modifications may be made to the environmental conditions (e.g., lighting, temperature, photoperiod) in order to speed up the growth of the cultures.

Algal Culturing and Aseptic Technique

Newcomers to the field of algal culturing and aseptic technique would find it useful to read Chapters 2 (Freshwater Culture Media), 3 (Marine Culture Media) 5 (Sterilization and Sterile Technique), and Appendix A (Recipes for Freshwater and Seawater Medium) of Robert A. Andersen's "Algal Culturing Techniques" book (2005). This book may be purchased for ~$80 from Amazon. Portions of this book are also accessible online at http://www.amazon.com/Algal-Culturing-Techniques-Robert-Andersen/dp/0120884267#reader_0120884267 and http://books.google.com/books/about/Algal_culturing_techniques.html?id=9NADUHyFZaEC as of October 18, 2011 .

Customized training workshops for algal culturing, maintenance, medium preparation, and aseptic technique are also available here at the CPCC.