A microbiological culture, or microbial culture, is a method of growing a microbial organism to determine what it is, its abundance in the sample being tested, or both. It is one of the primary diagnostic methods of microbiology. It is often used a tool to determine the cause of infectious disease by letting the agent multiply (reproduce) in predetermined media in laboratory.
The most common method of microbiological culture uses Petri dishes with a layer of agar-based growth medium in them to grow bacterial cultures. This is generally done inside of an incubator.
The term culture can also, though infrequently and informally, be used as a synonym for tissue culture, which involves the growth of cells or tissues explanted from a multi-cellular organism.
Types of culture
See also
