Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My daughter and i are starting her project on Which Disinfectant Kills the Most Germs/Bacteria. On the project we selected it states to use nectar agar but working in a lab i was able to get blood agar... Will blood agar still be ok to use for this project?

mprada wrote:My daughter and i are starting her project on Which Disinfectant Kills the Most Germs/Bacteria. On the project we selected it states to use nectar agar but working in a lab i was able to get blood agar... Will blood agar still be ok to use for this project?

Hi mprada,

Blood agar is usually incorporated into a project to differentiate bacteria from each other (blood agar is known as differential media), and thus is often used in experiments to identify unknown bacteria. If your daughter's project is testing the disinfectant that just kills the most bacteria (easily done by counting the number of colonies on each plate with a different disinfectant), it's not necessary and also not advisable to use due to risk of human contamination. If it's not too much trouble, I would really recommend using nutrient agar for this project instead!

Please read this SciBuddies article on which types of agar to use for experiments:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... robes-agar



Blood Agar vs Nutrient Agar

https://sciencing.com/nutrient-agar-vs- ... 72699.html


Hope this helped,

JSK