Development of Fungal Media for using in Laboratory Learning

Abstract

Background : Because common fungal media used in laboratory learning are expensive, and the nature of fungi in easily growing and the plenty of agricultural products in our country, can make it be possible to perform the experiment to prove the hypothesis and develop the cheaper media.

Objective : To develop  the new fungal media for laboratory learning.

Methods : Cultivate molds in the media each prepared from sweet potato, pumpkin, soy bean, mung bean and red bean, then select the one that yields the best fungal growth to develop the media formular for assessment of fungal growth comparing to the standard media.

Results : Four formulae of the new fungal media containing pumpkin sucrose agar (PKSA), pumpkin dextrose agar (PKDA), red bean-pumpkin sucrose agar (RPSA), red bean-pumpkin dextrose agar (RPDA), were developed and tested to cultivate 7 molds compared with those of potato dextrose agar (PDA). Four species showed better growth in the 4 formulae and 2 species showed better growth in PDA, while 1 species showed no difference among all media (p<0.05)

Discussion and conclusion : Though the four developed fungal media cannot absolutely defeat PDA, their lower costs could be accepted. Furthermore, some characters appearing on developed media revealed more advantage of specimens-preparation. However, the preparation method of these media have to be further improved for routine performing.

Key word : fungal media,  microbiological media, laboratory learning