Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) under the aegis of Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), Government of India established ICAR- National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms (ICAR-NBAIM) in the year 2001 for collection, maintenance, conservation and supply of agriculturally important microorganisms (AIMs) all over the country. A landmark development of ICAR-NBAIM was the establishment of NAIMCC (National Agriculturally Important Microbial Culture Collection) in the year 2004.
National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Govt. of India recognized ICAR-NBAIM culture collection (NAIMCC) as one of the national repositories of India. At present, NAIMCC is holding more than 7000 microbial accessions including fungi, bacteria, actinomycetes and cyanobacteria. The culture collection is an affiliate member of World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC) and Asian Consortium for the Conservation and Sustainable use of Microbial Resources (ACM). The culture collection acquired the status of International Depositary Authority (IDA) for the purposes of patent procedure under the Budapest Treaty in the year 2020.

NAIMCC has state-of-art facilities for the maintenance, conservation and characterization of microorganisms. AIMs are preserved and maintained by at least two methods depending on type of microorganisms, i.e. short-term preservation through storage of microbial cultures in glycerol stock at -80ºC (fungi & bacteria) and mineral soil (fungi); long term storage through lyophilization and cryopreservation. Cyanobacterial cultures are exclusively being maintained by cultivation under active culture.

NAIMCC is also engaged in supply of pure cultures to various research organizations and industry and provides microbial identification services along with associated knowledge.

Currently, NAIMCC is providing following services to cater the need of all stakeholders:

• General Deposit of Microorganisms
• Safe Deposit of Microorganisms
• Registration of elite microbes
• Patent Deposits of Microorganisms
• Supply of microbial cultures