Poured Culture Media Plates

Ideally in free steam at 100°C. Alternatively in a waterbath just less than boiling.

It is not recommended to heat bottled agar in a microwave oven or on a hot plate because there is a risk of serious injury from broken glass and hot agar.

We can provide a great deal of information so that the user can make an informed choice. Please phone or email with details.

The sterility of the packaged medium is assured and all but the outer layer of packaging is also sterile. Thus the risk to the environment to be sampled is greatly reduced. There is an additional benefit that the additional packaging and process extends the room temperature shelf life. This can be sufficient reason for small or irregular users to prefer irradiated.

Settle plates are used to monitor the level of viable particles in the environment through a process of passive air sampling. A viable particle settles on agar plates at a rate dependent on its characteristics and the airflow in the environment.

EU GMP Guide Annex 1 has recommended that 90mm settle plates can be exposed in cleanroom environments for up to 4 hours. However, agar plates may dry out during long exposures where the rate of air exchange is high. So, it might be necessary to use deep filled settle plates, or replace the settle plate after a shorter time to ensure satisfactory growth promotion after exposure.

The storage condition for the majority of our prepared media is Ambient not exceeding 25ºC, the exception being a couple of very specialist products.

We have never specified storage in a fridge for our general media as this causes excessive condensation and can result in a very wet agar surface. This makes the product impossible to use.

General purpose media have nutrients that support the growth of most non fastidious culturable microorganisms. Selective growth media contain components that will inhibit the growth of some types of microorganisms, while supporting the growth of others.

General purpose media, such as Tryptone Soya Agar, are used to produce total counts. While selective media, such as XLD for Salmonella species, are used to test presence/absence of specific types of microorganism.