An evaluation of Clostridium perfringens media

The objective of this experiment was to compare a range of agars in terms of their suitability as cultural media for three different strains of Clostridium perfringens vegetative cells and recovery media for thermally treated C. perfringens spores. The eight media tested were; tryptose sulphite cycloserine + egg yolk emulsion (EYE) (TSC+), sulphite cycloserine − EYE (TSC−), Shahidi–Ferguson perfringens agar + EYE (SFP+), Shahidi–Ferguson perfringens agar − EYE (SFP−), oleandomycin polymyxin sulfadiazine perfringens (OPSP) (pour plate (OPSPPP) and spread plate (OPSPSP)), reinforced clostridial agar (RCA) and brain heart infusion agar (BHI). The three strains used were C. perfringens DSM 11784, C. perfringens NCTC 08237 and C. perfringens NCTC 10614. The optimum growth of the three C. perfringens vegetative cell strains was obtained on RCA and TSC, also, the addition of EYE did not improve growth. For thermally treated and untreated spores, RCA and BHI were the only media of those tested that supported the germination and growth of the spores. The results indicate that TSC− and RCA best cultured the three C. perfringens strains, while RCA was a significantly (P ⩾ 0.05) better medium for recovering thermally treated and untreated C. perfringens spores than any other media examined in this study. This research offers definitive data with respect to recovery and growth rate of C. perfringens on a number of commercial media and could be used as a reference by researchers when choosing an appropriate medium for use in isolating and recovering C. perfringens.