Tryptic Soy Agar (TSA)

Description

Tryptic (Trypticase) Soy Agar (TSA) is used for the isolation and cultivation of nonfastidious and fastidious microorganisms.

TSA has a multitude of uses in the clinical laboratory including maintenance of stock cultures, plate counting, isolation of microorganisms from a variety of specimen types and as a base for media containing blood. It is also recommended for use in industrial applications when testing water and wastewater, food, dairy products, and cosmetics.

Since TSA does not contain the X and V growth factors, it can conveniently be used in determining the requirements for these growth factors by isolates of Haemophilus by the addition of X, V and XV Factor Strips to inoculated TSA plates.