Freeze-drying fungi using a shelf freeze-drier.

Abstract

Lyophilization, the removal of water by freezing and then volatilization at low pressure and temperature, has been employed as a standard long-term preservation method for many filamentous fungi. The method outlined involves the use of standard shelf freeze-drying and skimmed milk as a suspending solution/lyoprotectant. This approach has been employed to freeze-dry the majority of the 50,000 fungal strains that have been successfully lyophilized at the Centraal bureau voor Schimmelcultures (CBS) culture collection (http://www.cbs.knaw.nl/).