Evaluation of dry sheet medium culture plate (Compactdry TC) method for determining numbers of bacteria in food samples

The Compactdry, a ready-to-use and self-diffusible dry medium sheet culture system, has been developed by the Nissui Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. for enumerating bacteria in food. The Compactdry consists of special spread sheet with culture medium that is the same as standard method nutrients, a cold water-soluble gelling agent, and a unique plastic dish. The procedure for bacterial examination in a sample solution (1 mi) is to just inoculate a test solution into the center of the self-diffusible medium and incubate at 35 degrees C for 48 h, The Compactdry TC (CTC) for the enumeration of total aerobic bacteria from 97 food samples was compared with the standard plate count (SPC) method and 3M Petrifilm aerobic count plates (PAC). The correlation coefficients between the CTC and SPC method, the CTC and PAC, and the PAC and SPC method were 0.97, 0.99, and 0.97, respectively. The Compactdry system is useful for the enumeration of total aerobic bacteria in food and may be a possible suitable alternative to the conventional pour-plate or the Petrifilm plate methods.