What is the purpose of the streak plate method?

As you might guess, the purpose of streaking for isolation is to produce isolated colonies of an organism on an agar plate. This is useful when you need to separate organisms in a mixed culture or when you need to study the colony morphology of an organism.

What is plating method in microbiology?

This technique typically is used to separate microorganisms contained within a small sample volume, which is spread over the surface of an agar plate, resulting in the formation of discrete colonies distributed evenly across the agar surface when the appropriate concentration of cells is plated.

What is streak plate method?

Streak plate technique is used to grow bacteria on a growth media surface so that individual bacterial colonies are isolated and sampled. When the selected culture media is inoculated using a single isolated colony, the resulting culture grows from that selected single clone.

How do you describe a streak plate?

An unglazed piece of porcelain, such as a tile, used to test the characteristic streak of minerals by rubbing the mineral across the tile. Streak plates have a hardness of about 6.5 on the Mohs scale and cannot be used for testing harder minerals.

What is a streak plate made of?

The surface across which the mineral is dragged is called a “streak plate”, and is generally made of unglazed porcelain tile. In the absence of a streak plate, the unglazed underside of a porcelain bowl or vase or the back of a glazed tile will work.

What are the different methods used to streak a plate?

There are many different types of methods used to streak a plate. There are two most commonly used streak patterns, a three sector “T streak” and four-quadrant streak methods. Picking a technique is a matter of individual preference and can also depend on how large the number of microbes the sample contains.