Supplier of microbial growth media has installed a ProtoCol RGB automated colony counter from Synbiosis, to automatically differentiate and count coloured colonies on agar plates
Synbiosis, a manufacturer of automated colony counters, has announced that Oxoid, a supplier of microbial growth media, has installed a ProtoCol RGB system in its UK R&D and QC laboratories.
Designed to automatically differentiate and count any types of coloured colonies on any type of agar plate, the system will help Oxoid save time with the quality control of its chromogenic and standard agars.
ProtoCol RGB uses high-resolution colour information to differentiate, analyse and count coloured colonies, even those which have only slight colour variation. Counts are produced in just a few seconds.
The results are more accurate than those derived from more primitive systems based on filter wheel technology because these are limited to the range of colours in the wheel and have difficulty detecting slight colour variations between different organisms.
Each plate image is viewed live in full colour on a monitor and can be automatically saved for archiving or publication use.
ProtoCol RGB can also be trained to automatically both recognise and classify multiple colony types relating to different organisms or strains of individual organisms.
The system features full GLP compliance and integrates seamlessly into any microbiology laboratory.
Carol Macbride, quality control section manager of Oxoid said: "We intend to use the ProtoCol RGB to check our range of chromogenic agars which includes Salmonella, UTI and E coli /coliform media. Currently, we are using it for colony counts of spiral and pour plates to check the recovery and inhibition levels of mixed cultures on our enteric media.
We also intend to use the Treasury software to store images of different organisms on various media for training and presentation purposes." "We chose the ProtoCol RGB because its video images of our plates appear instantly on the screen, this provides quicker counts than scanning systems.
It is also easy to set up and gives us fully quantifiable and reproducible plate counts."
