The International Moss Stock Center which is located in Freiburg and managed by the Department of Plant Biotechnology of the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg collects, preserves and distributes moss mutants, transgenic lines and ecotypes.

The IMSC offers research institutions, industrial enterprises and other facilities the possibility to store back-up samples in its cryobank. Storing at IMSC guarantees that moss lines are safely deposited and available in the long term as the material is stored in special freezer containers in the gas phase of liquid nitrogen at temperatures below - 135 °C. 

A number is assigned to all the samples and will hereby provide trackable accession numbers which may be used as a citation in publications. 

For Physcomitrella patens it has been shown that the regeneration rate after cryopreservation  is 100 % (Schulte et al. 2004: High-throughput cryopreservation of 140000 Physcomitrella patens mutants. Plant Biol. 6, 119-127).

The IMSC moss collection currently includes ecotypes of Physcomitrella patens, Physcomitrium and Funaria as well as several transgenic and mutant lines of P. patens

      Egener et al. 2002, BMC Plant Biol. 2, 6