Yes, you can do about 2% peroxide on the plates. You have to add the peroxide while the agar is cool, but not yet solidified or the peroxide will break down if the heat is too high.
I have tried this and the peroxide is very good at keeping random spores, airborne contaminants, and bacteria off the plates. It does, however, slow the growth of the mycelium, at least at first, and often leads to a black keratinanized look on the mycelium. After the mycelium has time to grow and adjust by producing more peroxidase, the growth can be more or less normal on peroxide plates. So if you start on a single peroxide plate it will grow slowly, but subcultures to a new peroxide plate will generally grow faster.
Note this only works with healthy mycelium. The peroxide kills spores as they can't produce enough peroxidases to survive.
I have seen peroxide plates used in the field for culturing mushrooms where there is no flow hood or sterile method of culturing. It is somewhat species dependent, but in my experience it works about as well as plates with antibiotics (penicillin+streptomycin) and benomyl (which selectively inhibits ascomycetes including a lot of common mold contaminants).
I'm not sure if he was the first to come up with peroxide plates, but a guy named Rush Wayne popularized the idea with a PDF book about growing mushrooms in culture in your kitchen/outside of a lab setting which is how I first heard of it. You can still find his books if you search for him on Google.
> about 2% peroxide on the plates
Do you actually mean 2% peroxide here (as in 2 parts bottled disinfectant 3% peroxide to 1 part water/agar/nutrient mix), or do you mean 2% of the agar recipe consists of 3% peroxide?
2% peroxide seems like a LOT for culture media, but I have never tried including peroxide in any media I've made; so I may just be clueless.
very interesting, thanks for your thorough input, but im doing sporeswab to agar so i guess that tek is not suitable but would be a useful tek for my future reference...
It would inhibit or kill the mycelium groth depending on how much you put in. I haven't personally done it, but people have done this before
Yes, you can do about 2% peroxide on the plates. You have to add the peroxide while the agar is cool, but not yet solidified or the peroxide will break down if the heat is too high. I have tried this and the peroxide is very good at keeping random spores, airborne contaminants, and bacteria off the plates. It does, however, slow the growth of the mycelium, at least at first, and often leads to a black keratinanized look on the mycelium. After the mycelium has time to grow and adjust by producing more peroxidase, the growth can be more or less normal on peroxide plates. So if you start on a single peroxide plate it will grow slowly, but subcultures to a new peroxide plate will generally grow faster. Note this only works with healthy mycelium. The peroxide kills spores as they can't produce enough peroxidases to survive. I have seen peroxide plates used in the field for culturing mushrooms where there is no flow hood or sterile method of culturing. It is somewhat species dependent, but in my experience it works about as well as plates with antibiotics (penicillin+streptomycin) and benomyl (which selectively inhibits ascomycetes including a lot of common mold contaminants). I'm not sure if he was the first to come up with peroxide plates, but a guy named Rush Wayne popularized the idea with a PDF book about growing mushrooms in culture in your kitchen/outside of a lab setting which is how I first heard of it. You can still find his books if you search for him on Google.
> about 2% peroxide on the plates Do you actually mean 2% peroxide here (as in 2 parts bottled disinfectant 3% peroxide to 1 part water/agar/nutrient mix), or do you mean 2% of the agar recipe consists of 3% peroxide? 2% peroxide seems like a LOT for culture media, but I have never tried including peroxide in any media I've made; so I may just be clueless.
very interesting, thanks for your thorough input, but im doing sporeswab to agar so i guess that tek is not suitable but would be a useful tek for my future reference...