A collaborative study on media for the enumeration of yeasts in foods

A collaborative study was made to evaluate the effectivity of a general purpose medium, tryptone glucose yeast extract (TGY) agar on the detection and enumeration of yeasts from food. Nine laboratories participated in the study and compared five media (four kinds of TGY with different concentrations of glucose, one of them without tryptone, and, for comparison, dichloran rose bengal chloramphenicol (DRBC) agar). Six food samples were investigated by each laboratory and 23 additional food samples were investigated individually by different laboratories. No difference was found in the performance of media with either the samples common to all laboratories or the various samples tested in different ones. A medium consisting of tryptone, glucose and yeast extract, at any concentration of glucose tested, appeared reliable for the detection and enumeration of yeasts from foods, and its performance did not differ from that of DRBC. Omission of tryptone as recommended by ISO provided an even simpler medium of equally good performance. TGY without chloramphenicol may result in higher total counts due to the development of bacteria. DRBC incubated in light results in lower counts compared to that incubated in the dark.