Queensland Plant Pathology Herbarium and Insect Collection

The Plant Pathology Herbarium and Insect Collection holds specimens of most of the known fungal pathogens of plants and insects, as well as insect pests that occur in Queensland. These collections support the reliable and accurate identification of plant diseases and insect pests in Queensland.

Supporting the Biosecurity Act 2014, the collections enhance Queensland's biosecurity through the early detection of new and emerging plant diseases and pests.

State scientific collection

The Plant Pathology Herbarium contains:

  • more than 630,000 specimens representing almost 600 fungal species in Australia
  • a collection of 23,000 fungal cultures and 1,000 bacterial cultures in Australia.

The Insect Collection has about 1.5 million pinned insect specimens and 52,000 slide-mounted specimens.

Access to the collection

The Culture Collection is a potential source of natural products (chemicals, proteins, genes) that may have economic value in the search (bio-discovery) for novel compounds of benefit in pharmacology, biotechnology, industry and agriculture. For more information about accessing the living cultures of fungi and bacteria from the Culture Collection see the information sheet (PDF, 736.4KB) .

If you are a researcher, you can access the collection by prior arrangement—contact the curator by email.

Contact