Compact Dry Enterococcus plates | Compact Dry Enterococcus | Shimadzu

1. About Enterococci bacteria

– Enterococci are found in very large numbers in the gastrointestinal tract of humans and animals. They can therefore be used as an indicator of food hygiene and sanitation.

– A high Enterococci count in environmental and food samples means that the company is not complying with proper environmental monitoring.

– Most species of the genus Enterococcus are regarded as low-grade pathogens, but some opportunistic species can produce various virulence factors with resistance to different antibiotics.

– Two of the many species of the genus Enterococcus, Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium, have gained considerable importance in clinical microbiology because they are known to cause various infections such as urinary tract infections, bacteraemia, meningitis, wound infections and neonatal infections.

– In the food industry, Enterococcus is a common parameter for food products such as milk, meat, deli meat products and fermented variants of milk and meat.

– For this reason, a procedure for testing and detecting Enterococci is recommended, and the Compact Dry Enterococci plate from Nissui offers convenience to the user thanks to the advantage that no complex preparation of culture media, equipment or consumables is required.

– All the technology used for this Compact Dry Enterococci plate is a pre-poured medium. The user only needs to extract the sample, pipette it onto the plate and take it to incubation.

2. Advantages of using the Compact Dry Enterococci plate | Shimadzu

– Simple, easy-to-use procedure, with no need to prepare consumables or complex equipment.
– Easy to use, and no time lost training users.
– The compact dry plate is easy to store thanks to its packaging of 4 plates per pack.
– Results are quite accurate, easy to interpret, and available after 24 hours.
– Colonies can be isolated for biochemical testing.

3. Testing procedure on the Compact Dry Enterococci plate | Shimadzu

– Aseptically weigh 10.0 g of sample, or use a pipette to take 10.0 ml (for samples that are a solution), and place it in a suitable sterile container (for example a sterile sample bag, a dilution bottle or a Whirl Park bag).
– Add 90.0 ml of diluent to reach a 1:10 dilution and homogenise the sample. Adjust the pH if necessary. The diluent usually recommended is Butterfield's phosphate buffer, maximum recovery diluent and other suitable diluents depending on BAM.
– If necessary, the sample can be diluted further.
– Open the lid of the Compact Dry plate. Take 1.0 ml of the diluted sample with a micropipette and place it in the middle of the Compact Dry plate. Close the lid of the plate.
– Invert and incubate the compact dry plate under the specific incubation conditions (Per Microval standard: 37 ± 1°C for 20-24 hours and per NordVal standard: 36 ± 1°C for 24 ± 2 hours )

* Reading the results

Select plates with 10-150 colonies. Count the blue / blue colonies for Enterococcus.

* The procedure for handling the Compact Dry ETC Enterococcus plate is illustrated in pictures as follows:

* Note

- If more than 104 CFU of bacteria are inoculated onto the plate, no separate colonies will be formed and the whole medium will turn blue.. In this case the sample needs to be diluted.

- Lactobacillus gassari can cause false positive results.

- After the results have been read, the plate is autoclaved (121 °C/ 30 minutes) before it is disposed of.