How long are fungal spore cultures stable in physiological salt solution stored in a fridge (+4C)?
This depends highly on the species that you work with, and indeed also on the strain. For long-term storage, this is not the best of all ideas. Some spores will probably germinate, others will die. With my fungi (mucoralean zygomycetes) more than a week cannot be recommended.
I fear, you will need to find out by checking viability for your isolates.
Dear Johannes, thank you for your answer.
I use several strains (mostly zygomycetes, together with some ascomycetes). Is it a good method to prepare agar slants from cryovial cultures (I mean it is better not to open the cryovial (I only have one cryovial/strain) whenever the strain is needed). Or is it also fine to store a sporulated Petri-dish culture at +4C? I read that slants are preferred to Petri-dishes, because medium last longer. How long is it safe to store either slants or Petri-dish sporulated cultures in the fridge (+4C)?
Perfect, much better than spore suspensions. Mostly, you will also prefer to store the Petri dishes just at room temperature, or, what I also like, to cultivate them in t00 ml Erlenmeyer flasks with 20 ml of solid medium. The zygomycetes grow nicely in there and are safe from mites and similarly nasty zoology. Mucoralean spores germinate nicely even after months under these conditions.
Good luck.
I have also had some experience with another technique for mitospores of mucoralean zygomycetes: a droplet of a concentrated spore suspension put onto a small piece of sterile filter paper, allowed to dry, and then wrapped tightly in aluminium foil - but they might also be stored in a small vessel. Some spores stored in this way germinated even after up to two or three years storage in a refrigerator.
As Johannes has mentioned, it depends on the species. My particular spore suspensions are quite happy even after 6 months in sterile saline stored at 4C. Sure, there is some viability loss, but it's never been an issue to sub-culture from.
If you store your solid media preparations at 4C, sealing them with a gas permeable shrink seal helps slow down the evaporation from the media (for plates that is).
I've also had great success with Christine's method of filter paper preservation. Works great by just placing the disk saturated with spores onto a plate, and then you can sub-culture from there once it grows out.
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