use of Lenticules for the process control of enumeration techniques in food and environmental microbiology

Aims: Lenticules consist of control-dried plano convex discs in which biologically-active materials are contained within a water-soluble matrix. They can be produced to contain stable numbers of bacteria from 10 cfu lenticule(-1) to 10(8) cfu lenticule(-1) with a wide variety of organisms. These exp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of applied microbiology 2001-10, Vol.91 (4), p.660-667
Main Authors: Lightfoot, N.F, Richardson, I.R, Harford, J.P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
bacteria
Bacteria - growth & development
Bacteriological methods and techniques used in bacteriology
Bacteriological Techniques
Bacteriology
Biological and medical sciences
Colony Count, Microbial - instrumentation
Colony Count, Microbial - methods
Filtration - methods
Food industries
Food microbiology
Food Microbiology - standards
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Membranes, Artificial
Microbiology
process control
Quality Control
quantitative analysis
Reproducibility of Results
Water Microbiology - standards
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Summary:Aims: Lenticules consist of control-dried plano convex discs in which biologically-active materials are contained within a water-soluble matrix. They can be produced to contain stable numbers of bacteria from 10 cfu lenticule(-1) to 10(8) cfu lenticule(-1) with a wide variety of organisms. These experiments were carried out to validate their use as a tool for internal quality control in quantitative microbiology. Methods and Results: The Lenticules were used routinely in standard quantitative microbiological procedures across five laboratories. Results showed the materials to be stable, homogenous and capable of identifying systematic errors. Conclusions: The Lenticules provide suitable, stable control materials. Significance and Impact of the Study: Routine internal quality control of quantitative measurements is greatly improved; the materials are easy to use and enable comparisons between laboratories to be made.
ISSN:1364-5072
1365-2672
DOI:10.1046/j.1365-2672.2001.01432.x