David Smith (Author) David Smith has over 48 years at CABI as Preservation Officer, Curator and latterly Director of Biological Resources and is now retired with the honour of being a CABI Emeritus Fellow. Having a long history of managing a living fungal collection; developing and managing projects on conservation and use of microorganisms; and microbiological regulatory environment particularly, the Nagoya protocol. In past roles as President of the World Federation for Culture Collections, President of the European Culture Collection's Organisation and the UK Federation of Culture Collections he has visited collections in 34 countries and helped set up and enhance collections in 19 countries. He has presented over 160 conference papers and has over 230 publications including 80 peer reviewed papers, 4 books and over 40 book chapters. Matthew J Ryan (Author) Matthew J Ryan is Research Lead for Biological Resources at CABI and formerly curator of CABI's culture collection of 30000 living microbes. He is currently project manager for the UK Crop Microbiome Cryobank and works on a range of projects related to both the microbiome and the development of novel biobanking solutions. He has published widely in the fields of cryopreservation, microbiology and culture collections and currently has several external roles on national and international advisory groups, including the United States Culture Collection Network steering committee and the board of the International Alliance for Phytobiomes Research. Alan Buddie (Author) Alan Buddie is currently Microbiology & Molecular Biology Research Leader with over 30 years of experience in applied microbiology with CABI.

He specialises in identification and phylogenetic analysis of fungi and bacteria (also extending to nematodes and insects). He has a strong background in microbial biochemistry and biosafety. In addition, he is author of more than 45 peer-reviewed papers.