The ARS Culture Collection data portal is a data sharing platform for people working with microbial strains housed in the ARS Culture Collection (NRRL) (https://nrrl.ncaur.usda.gov/). The user community can access data already generated by other researchers on strains of interest and can contribute data generated on strains they requested from the collection. The vision of this initiative is to create a virtuous cycle of data sharing, in which the ARS Culture Collection provides microbial strains to the user community at no charge, and the user community in return deposits data generated on those strains to a publicly available database such as NCBI. This will continue to add value to strains in the collection and accelerate the speed of research through data access.

The ARS Culture Collection (NRRL) is one of the world’s largest publicly accessible microbial collections and is responsible for breakthroughs that have increased agricultural productivity, enabled people to live longer and healthier lives, and contributed to a $175 billion per year bioeconomy in the U.S. At the heart of NRRL’s impact is a collection of nearly 100,000 bacteria and fungi developed through more than 100 years of scientific discovery. The NRRL is a unique and irreplaceable scientific asset that annually provides over 4,000 microbial cultures to scientists in more than 40 countries. These cultures have contributed to scientific advances described in more than 68,000 publications and patents as listed on Google Scholar.