The International Mycological Institute was a non-profit organisation, based in England, that undertook research and disseminated information on fungi, particularly plant pathogenic species causing crop diseases. It was established as the Imperial Bureau of Mycology at Kew in 1920 and amalgamated with CAB International in 1998.
The Imperial Bureau of Mycology was established in 1920 as a centre for accumulating and disseminating information on plant pathogenic fungi in the British empire and for undertaking systematic research into such fungi. It was initially based in two houses at Kew, but in 1930 moved into a purpose-built building in the grounds of the Royal Botanic Gardens. In the same year, it became part of the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux and was renamed the Imperial Mycological Institute (IMI). [1]
IMI provided an identification service for pathogenic fungi from 1921 onwards and in 1922 started publishing abstracts of research literature in the Review of Applied Mycology. An herbarium of fungal specimens was also established. The journal Index of Fungi, covering all new fungal names, began in 1940 and the Bibliography of Systematic Mycology in 1947. In 1943, the first edition of the standard reference work, the Dictionary of the Fungi was published. A culture collection of living fungi was initiated in 1947. [1]
In 1948, IMI changed its name to the Commonwealth Mycological Institute and in 1986 to the International Mycological Institute. In 1993, it was moved from Kew to Egham, Surrey, [1] and in 1998 it merged with the International Institute of Entomology, the International Institute of Biocontrol, and the International Institute of Parasitology to form CAB International. [2] In 2010, the former IMI herbarium was merged with that of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. [3]
Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their taxonomy, genetics, biochemical properties, and use by humans. Fungi can be a source of tinder, food, traditional medicine, as well as entheogens, poison, and infection.
Gordon Herriot Cunningham, CBE, FRS was the first New Zealand-based mycologist and plant pathologist. In 1936 he was appointed the first director of the DSIR Plant Diseases Division. Cunningham established the New Zealand Fungal Herbarium, and he published extensively on taxonomy of many fungal groups. He is regarded as the 'Father' of New Zealand mycology.
Edred John Henry Corner FRS was an English mycologist and botanist who occupied the posts of assistant director at the Singapore Botanic Gardens (1929–1946) and Professor of Tropical Botany at the University of Cambridge (1965–1973). Corner was a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College from 1959.
The Westerdijk Institute, or Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute, is part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. The institute was renamed on 10 February 2017, after Johanna Westerdijk, the first female professor in the Netherlands and director of the institute from 1907 to 1958. The former name of the institute was CBS-KNAW Fungal Biodiversity Centre or Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures. Despite the name change the collection maintained by the institute remains the CBS collections and the use of CBS numbers for the strains continues.
Petter Adolf Karsten was a Finnish mycologist, the foremost expert on the fungi of Finland in his day, and known in consequence as the "father of Finnish mycology".
Sir Edwin John Butler was an Irish mycologist and plant pathologist. He became the Imperial Mycologist in India and later the first director of the Imperial Bureau of Mycology in England. He was knighted in 1939. During his twenty years in India, he began large scale surveys on fungi and plant pathology and published the landmark book Fungi and Disease in Plants: An Introduction to the Diseases of Field and Plantation Crops, especially those of India and the East (1918) and has been called the Father of Mycology and Plant Pathology in India.
The British Mycological Society is a learned society established in 1896 to promote the study of fungi.
Pier Andrea Saccardo was an Italian botanist and mycologist. He was also the author of a color classification system that he called Chromotaxia. He was elected to the Linnean Society in 1916 as a foreign member. His multi-volume Sylloge Fungorum was one of the first attempts to produce a comprehensive treatise on the fungi which made use of the spore-bearing structures for classification.
David Leslie Hawksworth is a British mycologist and lichenologist currently with a professorship in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Madrid, Spain and also a Scientific Associate of The Natural History Museum in London. In 2002, he was honoured with an Acharius Medal by the International Association for Lichenology. He married Patricia Wiltshire, a leading forensic ecologist and palynologist in 2009. As of 2022, he is the Editor-in-Chief of the journals IMA Fungus and Biodiversity and Conservation.
Richard William George Dennis, PhD, was an English mycologist and plant pathologist.
David Norman Pegler is a British mycologist. Until his retirement in 1998, he served as the Head of Mycology and assistant keeper of the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. Pegler received his BSc from London University in 1960, thereafter studying tropical Agaricales with R.W.G. Dennis as his graduate supervisor. He earned a master's degree in 1966, and a PhD in 1974. His graduate thesis was on agarics of east Africa, later published as A preliminary agaric flora of East Africa in 1977. In 1989, London University awarded him a DSc for his research into the Agaricales.
Kenneth A. Harrison was a Canadian mycologist. He was for many years a plant pathologist at what is now the Atlantic Food and Horticulture Research Centre in Nova Scotia. After retirement, he contributed to the taxonomy of the Agaricomycotina, particularly the tooth fungi of the families Hydnaceae and Bankeraceae, in which he described several new species.
Yolande Dalpé is a former Research Scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. She became the first mycologist in Ottawa to study the taxonomy of mycorrhizal fungi. Her research focuses on developing new information on taxonomy, phylogeny, distribution and biology of fungi, including systematic research related to biosecurity/alien invasive species as well as species involved in the development of bioproducts. She was awarded the Lawson Medal by the Canadian Botanical Association for her "cumulative, lifetime contributions to Canadian botany, for the research she has performed in mycology, and has been recognized nationally and internationally." The standard author abbreviation Dalpé is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Stanley John Hughes (1918–2019) was a Canadian scientist who is known throughout the global field of mycology for developing and introducing a precise and meticulous system for classifying fungi that is still used today. A naturalized Canadian, he was a federal research scientist for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at what is today the Ottawa Research and Development Centre.
Guy Richard Bisby (1889–1958) was an American Canadian mycologist and botanist in plant pathology. He spent his early career working as a professor at the University of Minnesota and University of Manitoba in plant pathology, and his late career as Senior Assistant Mycologist at the Imperial Mycological Institute in Kew, England. He published around fifty books and papers in mycology that extensively contributed to the taxonomy and nomenclature of fungi.
Colin Booth was an English mycologist, known a leading authority on the genus Fusarium.
Amy Yarnell Rossman is an American mycologist and a leading expert in identifying fungi.
Sydney Francis Ashby was a British mycologist and phytopathologist. He published on the genus Phytophthora.
Samuel Paul Wiltshire was an English mycologist and phytopathologist. For the academic year 1943–1944 he was the president of the British Mycological Society.
Brian Charles Sutton is a British botanist, phytopathologist, mycologist, known as one of the world's leading experts in coelomycete classification. He was the president of the British Mycological Society for the academic year 1985–1986.