Culture media, even in the emerging era of rapid microbiological methods (and notwithstanding that many rapid methods are culture-based), continues to remain a fundamental tool in the pharmaceutical and healthcare microbiology laboratory.

Tim Sandle has written a new peer-reviewed paper. Here is an exact:

Culture media is an important part of pharmaceutical microbiology: to enumerate and identify microorganisms . Control of culture media, in terms of appropriate records through to plate reading, forms an important part of data integrity in the microbiology laboratory (as assessed by Saha (2016) and Sandle (2016). 

Media is devised on the basis of microorganisms requiring nutrients in order to grow. These nutrients are formulated and supplied by either solid or liquid culture media. The standard solid medium is a type of nutrient agar, a gelatinous substance derived from seaweed. The standard liquid medium is a type of nutrient broth, composed of water, meat extract peptone, and sodium chloride. While many aspects of the manufacture and use of culture media are well-described, the aim of this article is to pinpoint one of those aspects that is not always adequately and this which can lead to errors: sterilization.