Petri dishes are often used to make agar plates for microbiology studies. The dish is partially filled with warm liquid containing agar and a mixture of specific ingredients that may include nutrients, blood, salts, carbohydrates, dyes, indicators, amino acids or antibiotics.
- Sterile standard 90mm petri dishes are used by microbiologists to culture microorganisms on solid media.
- Sterile Petri Dishes
- Case of 500 petri dishes
- Available from stock
- Aseptically manufactured
- Triple vented
- Mirror finished moulds ensure high optical clarity
- Ideal for use in automatic plate pourers
- Ideal for maximizing incubator space
- A Petri dish (alternatively known as a Petri plate or cell-culture dish) is a shallow transparent lidded dish that biologists use to hold growth medium in which cells can be cultured originally, cells of bacteria, fungi and small mosses.
- The container is named after its inventor, German bacteriologist Julius Richard Petri.[4][5][6] It is the most common type of culture plate.
- The Petri dish is one of the most common items in biology laboratories and has entered popular culture.
- Petri dishes are usually cylindrical, mostly with diameters ranging from 30 to 200 mm and a height to diameter ratio ranging from 1:10 to 1:4
- Petri dishes were traditionally meant to be reusable
- Petri dishes are often covered with a shallow transparent lid, resembling a slightly wider version of the dish itself
- Plastic dishes may have close-fitting covers that retard drying of the contents.
- Alternatively, some glass or plastic versions may have small holes around the rim, or ribs on the underside of the cover, to allow for ventilation of the air space over the culture and avoid water condensation that may be a problem that needs some attention.
- Some Petri dishes, especially plastic ones, usually feature rings and/or slots on their lids and bases so that they are less prone to sliding off one another when stacked.
- Small Petri dishes may have a protruding base that can be secured on a microscope stage for direct examination
- Petri dishes may have grids printed on the bottom to help in measuring the density of cultures.
- A multi-well plate is a single transparent container with an array of flat-bottomed cavities, each being essentially a small Petri dish.
- It makes it possible to inoculate and grow dozens or hundreds of independent cultures of dozens of samples at the same time. Besides being much cheaper and convenient than separate dishes, the multi-well plate is also more amenable to automated handling and inspection
Application
Contamination detection
- Petri dishes are also used for cell cultivation of isolated cells from eukaryotic organisms, such as in immunodiffusion studies, on solid agar or in a liquid medium.
Botany and Agriculture
- Axenic Cell culture of the plant Physcomitrella patens on an agarplate in a Petri dish
- Petri dishes may be used to observe the early stages of plant germination, and to grow plants asexually from isolated cells.
Entomology
- Dishes may be convenient enclosures to study the behaviour of insects and other small animals
Chemistry
- Due to their large open surface, Petri dishes are effective containers to evaporate solvents and dry out precipitates, either at room temperature or in ovens and desiccators
Sample storage and display
- Dishes also make convenient temporary storage for samples, especially liquid, granular, or powdered ones, and small objects such as insects or seeds.
- Their transparency and flat profile allow the contents to be inspected with the naked eye, magnifying glass, or low-power microscope without removing the lid.
