M-TEC AGAR

Description

M-TEC Agar is recommended for rapid isolation, differentiation and rapid enumeration of thermotolerant E. coli from water by membrane filtration. TEC stands for thermotolerant E. coli, the presence of which is widely used as an indicator of faecal contamination in water. There are many procedures for enumerating E. coli based on its ability to grow at elevated temperatures and produce indole from tryptophan. The determination of indole production along with MPN procedures requires the use of additional medium and additional incubation time. Dufour et al developed a simple membrane filtration technique for rapid enumeration of E. coli, which quantified E. coli within 24 hours without requiring subculturing and identification of isolates. M-TEC Agar and urea substrate are recommended for use in the detection of E. coli when evaluating microbiological quality of recreational water. Membrane filters that are used for filtration are aseptically placed with face upwards on the surface of M-TEC Agar. These plates are then incubated at 44.5 ? 0.5?C. Following incubation, these filters are aseptically placed on sterile absorbent cotton pads saturated with urease substrate i.e. urea (approx. 2 ml). Urease substrate is prepared by dissolving 2 grams? urea and 0.01gram phenol red in 100 ml distilled water with the pH adjusted to 5.0 ? 0.2. Urease-negative reaction or formation of yellow to yellow brown colonies observed after 15-20 minutes is confirmatory for presence of thermotolerant E. coli.