Our mission is to support application of low-input sustainable agriculture by: Providing, to the best of our ability, technical information about rhizobia, their preservation, and cultural and symbiotic characteristics; Acquiring and preserving the nitrogen-fixing bacterial symbionts of leguminous plants with the goal of maintaining widest possible genetic diversity; Maintaining quality control of new and existing germplasm by evaluation of microbiological purity and by examination of nodulation of the original trap host plant; Distributing cultures to the public and private sectors without charge for these services; Developing or adapting techniques in molecular biology for the determination of genetic diversity of rhizobia, to investigate interactions with their host plants and to identify novel characteristics; Acquiring, maintaining, evaluating quality, and distributing type strains for all the different taxa of nitrogen-fixing legume symbionts; Participating in the UNESCO program.