Website: www.uv.es/cect

The University of Valencia (UVEG) is a leading academic organisation at a national level, with a remarkable international dimension, which ranks among the top 300 in Europe as per university ranks. As per URAP 2016, UVEG ranks the third among all Spanish universities, first in Valencia region and 188th in the world. The Spanish Type Culture Collection (CECT), a broad scope collection, is a central service of the University of Valencia and thus, benefits from and excellent academic and research environment. CECT is the only collection of microorganisms that maintains and supplies prokaryotes and fungi, and is of official and public nature in Spain. Founded in 1960, it is a member of the World Federation on Culture Collections (WFCC) since 1977 and of the European Culture Collection Organization (ECCO) since 1983. In 1992, it was recognised as an International Depositary Authority (IDA) for storing microorganisms for patent purposes. According to the functions of a Biological Resource Centre, CECT activities include the preservation of microbial resources, research conducted upon them, and several services offered online. The main ones are the deposit of strains under three modalities (public, restricted and under the Budapest treaty), supply of strains for many different purposes (research, teaching, quality control, and biotechnological applications, etc.), identification of isolates, training and counselling on conservation and taxonomy. CECT currently maintains circa 10,000 microbial strains, most are prokaryotes, followed by yeasts and filamentous fungi.