The IBT culture collection was established around 1987 as a university research collection maintained by the former Mycology Group at the Department of Biotechnology. The collection was recognised and approved by World Federation of Culture Collections (WFCC) http://wdcm.nig.ac.jp/wfcc/ as collection #758 with the acronym IBT referring to ?Instituttet for Bioteknologi? ? the department name in Danish. Today, the IBT collection is maintained by the same group of people, now part of Center for Microbial Biotechnology (CMB) at Department of Systems Biology, Technical University of Denmark.

The IBT culture collection is based on the taxonomic work since the early 1970?s on mycotoxigenic fungi and the use of metabolite profiles in fungal systematics. At the beginning common food and feed borne Penicillium species were in focus but through numerous research projects at MSc, PhD and PostDoc level more genera were taken into account. As of today the genera Alternaria, Aspergillus, Fusarium, Penicillium, Stachybotrys, Trichoderma, Ulocladium, their relatives and teleomorphs are part of our research activities. The scientists at CMB have a very important network to internationally leading mycologists and culture collections which ensures front-line information on the systematics of these important fungal genera.

More than 30.000 strains are preserved at the IBT collection as conidial suspensions dried onto silica gel or as dried soil cultures, which are kept at 9 ?C (max. 20% RH). A small number of yeasts are also preserved in 10% glycerol at -80 ?C.