of providing the appropriate packaging fungus with access to oxygen remains viable five infection chambers with fungus were placed inside each of a series of rubbermaid u2122 containers to determine the role that the relative humidity rh within the container had on the long term storage stability of the fungus one series of containers had placed inside of them a wet sponge to insure the container atmosphere was kept at 100 rh another series of containers had a saturated solution of magnesium chloride mgcl 2 placed within to maintain 30 rh a final series of containers was kept at 0 rh by placing inside of them a large amount of silica gel all of the containers were stored at room temperature and the infection chambers within sampled periodically to determine fungal viability and chamber efficacy over an extended period of time the results are shown in table 5 and in fig2 and demonstrate the average measured viability in tabular and graph form through 14 months of storage the efficacy of the infection chambers at 9 months is also shown in fig3 the results demonstrate that 100 rh is significantly better than other humidities for the successful long term storage of the fungus table 5______________________________________percentage viability at various relative humidities relative humidity oftime 100 33 0 ______________________________________1 week 81 61 1 69 12 weeks 69 74 513 weeks 68 5 73 1 19 21 month 67 3 30 5 12 76 weeks 58 4 11 4 0 542 months 53 5 28 23 93 months 78 3 15 3 29 86 months 82 33 0 08 0 749 months 80 54 2 33 0 7514 months 84.