Description
Zobell’s Marine Agar AM 243 is prepared to conform to the formulation as described by Zobell.
It is used in the culture of heterotrophic marine bacteria; the minerals it contains closely mimicking sea-water, but with the additional nutrients, peptone and yeast extract reported by Jones to be the best source of nutrient to marine flora in general.
Marine bacteria are essential to the healthy marine ecosystem. Many millions of organisms are present per millilitre of nutrient sea-water. Careful monitoring of their numbers and activity is necessary to maintain conservation of marine life and a healthy marine food industry.
Standard pour plate and spread plates are used to enumerate heterotrophic marine bacteria. Buck and Cleverdon reported that higher bacterial counts were attained using a surface plate technique because of the thermo-sensitive nature of these organisms.
