Microbial Culture Media

Slide 1 of 7

A white plastic laboratory bottle with a blue screw cap. In front of the bottle, there are two piles of a beige granular substance, likely representing the Luria Agar in its solid form. The background is plain white, emphasizing the items in the foreground.

A white plastic container with a blue lid. In front of the container, there is a small pile of a grainy, beige-colored substance. The background of the image is plain and white. This medium is typically used for testing yeasts, molds, and bacteria in various industries.

Two ICRplus contact plates containing Sabouraud Dextrose Agar (SDA), which are used for microbiological testing. The plates are displayed side by side. Each plate contains a reddish-brown agar medium and is sealed with a clear plastic lid. The plates have barcodes and labels indicating lot numbers and expiration dates.

Vegetable Peptone Broth for Media Fill Trials. A sealed, flexible plastic bag filled with a brownish-red liquid. The bag is displayed against a white background. It has a clear, labeled port and attached tubing with a clamp to control the flow of the liquid.

A stack of sealed agar settle plates used for passive air monitoring. These plates are enclosed in a transparent plastic bag. In front of the bag, two agar plates are displayed with their lids off, revealing the yellowish nutrient medium used for detecting microbial growth. The plates and the bag are placed on a white background.

Two bottles filled with Mycoplasma, a red liquid. Next to the bottles, there are three petri dishes containing a similar red medium.

A collection of laboratory bottles containing various sterility testing culture media rinse and fluid. There are large transparent bottles with blue labels in the back row, medium-sized transparent and amber-colored bottles with different colored caps in the middle, and small transparent bottles with red, green, yellow, and blue caps in the front row. Each bottle has a label indicating its contents or purpose within sterility testing procedures.

A microbial culture medium is a mixture of substances that promotes and supports the growth and differentiation of microorganisms. Culture media contain nutrients, energy sources, growth-promoting factors, minerals, metals, buffer salts, and gelling agents (for solid media). The sophisticated formulations of our culture media ensure precise, reproducible, and repeatable microbiological test results. Culture media are still the golden standard in pharmaceutical and food and beverage industry to enumerate and detect microorganisms. Microbial culture media can be prepared as a liquid (broth), a solid (agar plates), or as a semi-solid (deeps). Solid and semi-solid media contain a solidifying agent such as agar or gelatine.

Our portfolio includes a broad range of dehydrated culture media in powder or granules. Our superior granulation technology provides maximum convenience, safety and meets the highest industry performance standards. Ready-to-use media are produced under standardized production conditions and solve numerous problems in microbiology laboratories where time, equipment, and trained personnel are often in short supply. We offer ready-to-use 90- and 55-mm agar plates, liquid media bottles, tubes, or 2 mL ampoules, broths and rinse fluids for your microbial testing application.

Products

Culture media for bioburden testing

Bioburden testing is used to determine the number of viable aerobic microorganisms in finished products or raw materials which have not been sterilized. We offer culture media designed for slow growers, such as R2A , casein soybean digest, such as tryptic soy agar (TSA) and Sabouraud’s dextrose (e.g. SDA) for bioburden testing. Specialized culture media are available for the detection of specified aerobic microorganisms. Standard solid culture media plates (90 mm), liquid media in a selection of bottles and tubes for enrichment cultures and NaCl-Peptone buffers are also available for bioburden testing.

Culture media for environmental monitoring

Surface and personnel monitoring are critical tools to keep production plants clean and minimize the risk of contamination. Explore our easy-to-use contact plates, contact slides, and swabs that help monitor the efficiency of these measures.

We offer culture media for active air monitoring such as settle and contact plates and agar strips which are used with the respective air monitoring system. A wide variety of settle plate formulations allow continuous passive monitoring at critical points during production. For the critical cleanroom classes with sterile production we supply ICR swabs, triple bagged and gamma-irradiated contact and settle plates.

Our culture media products have been developed in close cooperation with users and authorities to ensure they are tailored to the needs of our customers and follow international guidelines for critical and controlled environments such as EU, cGMP, USP or FDA Aseptic Guidance.

Culture media for media fill tests

A “media fill” (also known as a “process simulation”) test is a critical microbiological test carried out to assess the performance of an aseptic manufacturing procedure by replacing the pharmaceutical or beverage product with a sterile culture media. The ready-to-use culture media for media fill trials in the pharmaceutical industry include Tryptic Soy Broth (TSB) and Vegetable Peptone Broth (VPB). These liquid broths are sterile and supplied in 10L bags. Customized bags are available upon request. Our granulated culture media has been carefully formulated to ensure pharmaceutical manufacturers can perform efficient media fill trials with minimal risks. As well as for the RTU media, standard TSB and non-animal origin TSB are available. Our granulated media is irradiated and triple packed, to maximise safety when performing media fill trials. For media fill tests for beverage bottling and ice-crusher installations use our granulated Linden Grain medium.

Culture media for mycoplasma testing

Mycoplasma contamination is a widespread and reoccurring problem in a wide variety of cell culture systems. These microorganisms, which belong to the class Mollicutes, are comparatively small (0.2 – 0.3 µm), lack a cell wall and are thus not susceptible to penicillin or other antibiotics that act on this structure. This allows them to grow to high titers in culture media without exhibiting typical bacterial contamination signs, like turbidity. It is therefore important to test for mycoplasmas at various points in the manufacturing process. We provide a complete portfolio of ready-to use liquid and solid culture media required for detecting mycoplasmas according to European Pharmacopeia 6.1 (2.6.7.) and USP 35 (63).

Culture media for pathogen, spoilage organism & indicator organism testing

Microorganisms in raw materials or finished food and beverages products can cause deterioration of the product and disease in consumers. We offer a broad range of ready-to-use and dehydrated culture media for conventional testing of pathogens, spoilage organisms and indicator organisms. Culture media for the enrichment step can be made available on-demand, at the push of a button, with the revolutionary ReadyStream^® system, which prepares and dispenses pre-heated media when and where needed. Culture media is 10x concentrated allowing you to dispense up to 100 L of media with a 10 L bag.

Culture media for sterility testing

Sterility testing is a key GMP Microbiology testing requirement to confirm that products are free from viable microorganisms. Sterility testing is vital for medical devices, pharmaceuticals, preparations, tissue materials, and other products that claim to be sterile or free from viable microorganisms. Sterility testing culture media and rinsing fluids are the critical components of Steritest™ products. They provide the highest level of quality and testing confidence. Soybean-Casein Digest Medium (Trypticase Soy Broth) is suitable to culture both fungi and aerobic bacteria. Fluid Thioglycollate Medium (FTM) is primarily intended for the detection of anaerobic bacteria. However, it also enables the detection of aerobic bacterial. Clear Thioglycollate Medium has the same growth promotion properties as the standard FTM and this alternative formulation brings extra visual clarity versus the FTM, which has slight turbidity or haze.

Culture media supplements and additives

Many types of media require supplements or additives such as antibiotics, glycerol or Tergitol™ to ensure optimal growth of the microorganisms. Browse our portfolio to find the supplement matching you needs.

Culture Media for The Microbial Limit Test

The microbial limit test (MLT) is performed to assess how many and which of certain viable microorganisms are present in non-sterile pharmaceutical, healthcare or cosmetics manufacturing samples that range from raw materials to finished products. The test provides information about the safety of the tested product by determining if quantitative limits for certain microorganisms are exceeded. It covers testing for bile tolerant gram-negative bacteria as well as for Escherichia coli, Salmonella, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, clostridia and Candida albicans. The samples are prepared by mixing multiple portions taken randomly from the ingredient or product to be tested. If the samples contain antimicrobial substances, these have to be eliminated beforehand by dilution, neutralization, filtration, inactivation or other appropriate means. Great care must be taken to prevent microbial contamination from the outside.

We provide high quality culture media for performing the microbial limit test according to USP chapters 61 and 62 as well as EP chapters 2.6.12 and 2.6.13. These consistent culture media are quality controlled according to the highest standards, and are available in a variety of formulations as dehydrated culture media.

Related Resources

Article: Comparison of Granulated and Powdered Dehydrated Media
Microbial culture media is available in both powdered and granulated forms. This article compares the characteristics of each culture media format with regards to safety, handling and convenience.
Article: Culture Media for Compendial Methods
Learn more about our culture media portfolio for microbial examination of non-sterile products, fully compliant with the harmonized Pharmacopoeia.
Brochure: Dehydrated Culture Media
From basic to prime NutriSelect^® and GranuCult^® dehydrated culture media – according to your microbial testing needs.
Brochure: Convenient Culture Media Solutions
With the industry frequently facing new guidelines, staying upto-date with regulatory requirements becomes more and more challenging. The latest and most important change is the new EN ISO 11133:2014 – a quality standard for the preparation and quality control of culture media used for food and water testing.
Brochure: Mycoplasma Ready to Use Culture Media for Biopharmaceuticals
The stakes are high: mycoplasma testing of cell cultures for vaccine or protein therapeutics production is pivotal because sterilizing them by autoclaving isn’t possible, and sterile filtration is difficult because of their small size.
Data Sheet: Sterility Testing Media and Rinse Fluids
Easy to use with all Steritest™ devices. A non-coring, large diameter septum area is easy to pierce for operator safety and productivity.
Data Sheet: ICRICRplus Contact and Settle Plates
We offer a broad range of ready-to-use culture media to detect a wide range of microorganisms. Supplementation of the media with neutralizers like lecithin, polysorbate 80, histidine and sodium thiosulfate facilitates the growth of organisms in the presence of anti-microbial components.
Flyer: Culture Media and Certified Reference Materials acc. ISO 11133
Flyer: Granulated and Ready-to-Use Culture Media for Secure Media Fill Trials
As a worldwide leading provider of industrial microbiology solutions, we address the needs of customers in industries where consumer safety is a major concern. Food manufacturing is particularly sensitive due to the potentially grave consequences that product contamination may have on the health of consumers.
Flyer: Linden Grain Medium for Media Fill Simulations
When producing low-acid aseptic beverages, you want to be sure that your filling line is not contaminated with spoilage bacteria, yeasts or molds — not only because millions of product units may be lost. Contamination can result in considerable reprocessing, disposal and product-recall costs, as well as damage to brand reputation and consumer confidence.

Page 1 of 2