Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello,
My science fair project investigates the preservative qualities of different spices. To test this (my teacher specified that if I was going to do this project, I MUST use this method because thats the most scientfic way to go about doing this) I was going to grow an equal amount of fungus on a petri dish with agar and then sprinkle in the crushed herb. Over a certain period of time, I would record how much the fungus grew. To grow the intial fungus, i was just going to let a peice of bread bassically rot and take a sample of fungus from there. I do realise that fungus forms randomly and not in colonies however I will try to count and compare the growth in fungal count anyway.
So bassically I am seeing if the various spices (clove, thyme, etc) can stall fungul growth in comparison to control (petri dish fungal growth with no added spices)

If you could please help me on clarifying what I will be doing, because I do not really know if my methodology will work, and if you could please make some suggestions to improve it, that would be great. I was also wondering how I could grow or take the same amount of fungus in each petri dish and i was wondering how i would be able to see the fungal growth underneath the sprinkled herb or spice.

The due -date is nearing and I request you to help me as soon as you possible.

Thank you in advance,
Indranil

Hi,

This is a life sciences question, so I have moved this topic to this forum. In the meantime, I suggest you take a look at this: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p019.shtml; I would suggest modifying your procedure slightly and using the disc diffusion method described in this science buddies project.

Thank You.