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Natural Science Forum / Biology / Microbiology / August 2006Microbial loading and enumeration
What is microbial loading? When and where should it be done? Why is it that one has to choose plates that contain only 30 - 300 colonies? I'm doing an experiment that uses samples from the lake and pond and culturing the microorganisms in it using the streak and pour plate techniques. Thanks in advance >What is microbial loading? When and where should it be done? Why is it >that one has to choose plates that contain only 30 - 300 colonies? It is a rule of thumb, a guideline. There is no "rule". It just is usually good that way. And if you do 10-fold dilutions, you should get into that range. If colony counts are too low, your counting statistics are poor. If counts are too high, you start getting crowding, and thus coincident colonies. Of course, the latter point depends on colony size. Use your judgment, in the light of your needs. If you had large colonies, perhaps you could only count 10 per plate. So you would use lots and lots of plates to improve counting statistics. If the main goal is isolation, rather than counting -- then the lower limit does not hold. The fewer the better! bob |
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