Biological diversity preservation as a challenge: the role of microbiological Cork colonisation a short review

• Autor(a) principal: Romão,M. V. San
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0254-02232009000200004
• topic: Microbial ecology; microbial diversity; Earth sustainability; cork mycrobiota; cork stopper

Micro organisms are important sources of knowledge being of critical importance to the sustainability of life on Earth. The biodiversity preservation either of animals, plants or microorganisms and the use of alternative ways to explore their respective potential richness in a balanced manner implies deeper research in these areas covering the different required subjects. Changing both governmental and local perceptions about the obligation to preserve biodiversity, including microbial diversity, requires the demonstration that the sustainable use of biodiversity has positive economic value. The studies summarized on this paper respecting to cork microbial colonisation, tried to illustrate the relationship between microbes, effects on ecosystems behaviour, technological implications on society activities and subsequent economic impact. The requirement of increased efforts in the preservation of the oak forest as a sustainable environment namely due to the carbon assimilating and retention capacity of these systems and also the requisite of improved research efforts aiming to better understand the true role of cork fungal colonisation and to define suitable strategies to preserve cork stoppers use to seal wine bottles are also discussed. It is stress the fact that the increase in the market of alternative wine stoppers will reduce the economic value of cork forest therefore leading a finally loss of one of the best and most valuable examples of a human-nature balanced system.