microwave liquid agar preparation

[houdinihar]

hello fellow mushroom enthusiasts,
just wanted to update friends here about the microwave tek for agar (pda or mea). i recently did a search for this subject and found that a U.S. College in Texas did a study and found that microwaving liquid agar preps is just as effective against multiple microbes and spores as is autoclaving or pressure cooking like we usually do. the hardest bug to kill was e. coli, which took only 60 secs on high. period.
i tried the tek myself and found that it works just as published. i mixed the malt extract agar as instructed in a glass pyrex measuring cup, 1 gram per 25 ml warm water. put in just a slight bit extra for evaporation during the nuking process. the water has to be a bit warm just to dissolve the agar well.
after the agar was dissolved in the water i nuked everything for 1 minute and 25 secs and stirred with a little spoon a couple of times. i have a 1500 watt microwave, but the college tested a 650 watt version. you have to be careful not to allow the agar to boil over if the container is too small. it will make a terrible, sticky mess. after that i took the pyrex cup with the agar preparation over to my cheapo "glove box" for transfer to sterile petri dishes. i have recently transferred blue oyster, yellow oyster, and volvariella spp to these plates with no obvious contamination from the agar on the plates. i have several petri dishes left from several days ago with no contaminants seen. this tek does work and saves so much time.
houdinihar

[Baphom3t]

hmm, wonder how I missed this 
There's a few microwave teks.
I never found them to be useful.
I'll stick with PC'ing methods which have been proven time and time again.

Baph

[houdinihar]

Baph,
Not a surprise to miss one little article on the web stuff out there. here is the data link:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3890/is_199905/ai_n8840314

if nothing else it is interesting reading. i do like tried and true as well, but i'd like to think we have more to learn. all the teks here have been very helpful in building my knowledge base and i appreciate everyone who has contributed. the www is the best information base anyone could have and having great sites to share knowlegde with, like this one, is all the better as we are more and more supressed by overzealous governments that want to "protect" me (us). thanks
houdinihar

[Baphom3t]

Interesting article.
I do know that casing material can be nuked with great sucsess.
I have also read sucsess with agar being mic'd also but don't see the ratio of sucsess that one sees from pc'ing.
None the less, there is more to learn in this hobby.

It may be possible to decontam a dish via microwave but honestly I haven't tried it and therefore wouldn't mention it until I had a sucsess ratio of at least 5:1 and then I'd slap a Microwave Agar TEK up.
I think it would be more well known if it had better sucsess.

Baph