General Media

GENERAL PURPOSE MEDIA: General purpose media or basic medium is a routine culture media which is used for the cultivation of microorganisms in the microbiology laboratory. General purpose media can also be called simple or basal culture media. They are basically used for the culturing of bacteria that do not need extra growth nutrients, and are not fastidious in nature. General purpose media support the growth of a wide variety of bacteria, and they do not contain any growth inhibitory substance. Commonly used general purpose media in the microbiology laboratory include nutrient agar, nutrient broth, peptone water, tryptic soy broth, tryptic soy agar, Mueller-Hinton broth and Mueller-Hinton agar amongst others. Mueller-Hinton (MH) agar is the best medium for conducting antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) in the microbiology laboratory.