Culture Collection of Baltic Algae (CCBA) at the Institute of Oceanography, University of Gdañsk was created in the 1980s and has been recently developed within the BALTDER project. Curator: Dr. Adam Lata³a, e-mail address: oceal@univ.gda.pl.
Now CCBA holdings are mainly Baltic cyanobacteria, green algae and diatoms, although there are representatives of the other algal groups, like flagellates. The all strains were isolated from the coastal waters of the Southern Baltic and identified by A. Lata³a. They are mainly used by national institutions for scientific (Lata³a 1991, Lata³a et al. 1991, Lata³a & Surosz 1998, 1999, Lata³a & Misiewicz 2000) and educational purposes.
The list of strains identified to species level with microscopic images is presented on the web site, at Institute of Oceanography homepage http://www.ocean.univ.gda.pl/CCBA.html. Besides currently using strains numbers in parentheses were presented symbols previously used in publications.
CCBA has been gradually developed and now it contains about forty original Baltic algal strains. Future plans include purification of existing strains to axenic state and collaboration with other collections and taxonomic experts to verify the taxonomy of new isolates.
Moreover, the algal test organisms recommended by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) or European Committee for Standardization (CEN) are cultured and supplied for research and analysis of biological water quality.
The effect of such main factors as salinity, temperature and irradiance on the growth of some strains isolated from the Baltic Sea has been characterized by factorial experiment approach.
The CCBA includes strains of green algae (Chlorella vulgaris, Scenedesmus armatus var. subalternans, Scenedesmus acuminatus, Oocystis submarina, Oocystis parva, Monoraphidium contortum, Monoraphidium griffithii, Stichococcus bacillaris, Monoraphidium convolutum, diatoms (Cyclotella meneghiniana, Skeletonema costatum, Amphora coffeaeformis, Haslea spicula, Nitzschia thermaloides, Skeletonema costatum), cyanobacteria (Phormidium amphibium, Nodularia spumigena.