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Possible delays in order processing during the summer holiday period

Please note that due to staff summer holidays, the processing of orders may take longer than usual.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience and understanding.

We wish you a pleasant summer.

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Ordering rules

We accept only signed CCALA order forms send by post or their scans send by the e-mail. We accept your original institutional orders too. By submitting the online form, you explicitly agree with our terms and conditions.

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Contact

Culture Collection of Autotrophic Organisms (CCALA)
Experimental Garden and Gene Pool Collections Třeboň
Institute of Botany of the CAS, v. v. i.
ccala@ibot.cas.cz

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About CCALA culture collection

CCALA – Culture Collection of Autotrophic Organisms is a culture collection focused mainly on algae and cyanobacteria. It is based in Třeboň, Czech Republic, at the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and serves as a professional centre for the maintenance, study and distribution of living cultures important for research, education and the understanding of biodiversity.

The collection preserves strains from a wide range of environments — from common aquatic habitats and soils to snow, polar regions and thermal springs. Some strains represent more common organisms, while others are rare or scientifically valuable isolates. An important part of the collection consists of type and reference strains, which support species identification, taxonomy and the description of new taxa.

CCALA is not only a place where cultures are kept. It is a living scientific facility that provides long-term care, quality control, documentation and access to cultures for other institutions. Strains from the collection are used in algology, microbiology, ecology, taxonomy and biotechnological research. In this way, CCALA connects the preservation of biological diversity with direct support for modern science.

Can’t find “your alga”?

We do our best to keep the species names in our strains up to date with the latest scientific findings. Taxonomy is a living field, and algae are no exception — sometimes a species does not disappear from our collection, it simply gets a new name. So if you cannot find a particular species, don’t worry. It may have been renamed, moved to another genus, or updated according to recent taxonomic research. To check the current accepted name, we recommend using AlgaeBase. You are also welcome to contact our curator, who will be happy to help you track it down: Josef Juran (Josef.Juran@ibot.cas.cz) 

The Diversity Preserved in CCALA

  • 991 strains in the collection – nearly one thousand living cultures of algae and cyanobacteria form a diverse archive of microscopic life that can be preserved, studied and compared over time.

  • Isolates from more than 50 countries and geographic regions – the collection connects local and global biodiversity, from Czech ponds and soils to polar regions, mountain habitats, thermal springs and island ecosystems.

  • 73 type strains – these strains are important for taxonomy and accurate species identification, as they serve as reference material for describing, comparing and verifying the identity of organisms.

  • 223 new strains added over the past 5 years – CCALA is continuously expanding with new isolates from current research and remains a living, actively developed collection.

  • 25 taxonomic classes and 57 orders represented – the collection covers a broad range of algae and cyanobacteria and reflects their substantial species-level and evolutionary diversity.

  • Green algae and cyanobacteria are the most strongly represented groups – among the most common classes are Cyanobacteria, Chlorophyceae and Trebouxiophyceae, groups that play important roles in photosynthesis, primary production and the functioning of aquatic and soil ecosystems.

  • The most common habitats include ponds and pools, polar and subglacial localities, soils, lakes and reservoirs, and running waters – the collection includes organisms from common freshwater habitats as well as environments close to the limits of life, such as snow, glaciers, cryoconite holes and cold polar regions.

Historical Context of the CCALA Collection

The development of the CCALA collection is part of the broader history of algal cultures, which began at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. During this period, algae were becoming an important subject of experimental research, and it became clear that reliable scientific work required the use of defined cultures. These made it possible to maintain material of known origin over the long term and to compare results obtained at different institutions.

E. G. Pringsheim had a significant influence on the formation of this tradition. His work contributed to the development of cultivation methods and to the use of living cultures in algal research. His activities were also connected with the development of algological work in Prague and with the later establishment of specialized collections that preserve selected strains and make them available for further study.

CCALA follows the tradition of Czech algology and preserves documented biological material for further professional use. Strains kept in the collection can serve as reference material and allow repeated study of organisms that have previously been described or used in research.

The collection is also part of the broader field of algal culture collections, in which individual institutions maintain and provide strains of algae and cyanobacteria for scientific and professional work. This makes it possible to work with selected cultures over the long term and under comparable conditions.