But in Thailand, we tend to have names only for those things we can eat or make some use of. Because of this, the majority of the biodiversity in Thailand has not been given local names. Culture, in this sense, has nothing to do with art and literature. A culture collection of fungi comprises live specimens grown in an artificial environment, as opposed to a herbarium collection which consists of preserved specimens. Having such a living collection in Thailand would make it much easier for researchers to study fungi and do experiments.
Many countries have culture collections of organisms, be it fungi, bacteria or whatever.
As for our culture collection, although it's quite small compared to those international collections, what we have now is probably the biggest collection in Southeast Asia. And it's growing. The collection represents the biodiversity of Thailand and it belongs to Thailand. Any foreign researchers who want to work with the material have to treat it with respect, with the knowledge that it might be lent to them to work with but it doesn't belong to them. It comes back here.