Synbiosis system for mid-range colony counting
Protos 3 allows colony counts and identification of colonies cultured on chromogenic plates.
The machine took a year to develop and is a mid-range colony counting system.
Synbiosis told FoodQualityNews it can be used in food and environmental labs because the software allows rapid analysis of multiple colonies on one plate.
A mid-range system
Kate George, divisional manager at Synbiosis, said it is a mid-range system whereas ProtoCOL 3 is for colony counting and zone sizing.
“[It] Increases throughput and improves accuracy by eliminating keying and image transfer errors.
“The count results can be transferred to Excel where the count, plate id and images can be saved.
“This GLP compliant process, with its full audit trail, eliminates transcription errors to provide the user with data, which can be reviewed at any time and used to produce reports.”
Plate reading functions
The manufacturer of automated microbiological systems said pour plates, spiral paltes, gridded plates, streak plates, species identification, dilution series plates and large plates up to 150mm can be counted.
For standard 90mm plates, the smallest detectable colony is 43 microns.
The Protos 3, which comes in bright red, can analyse 75 plates in five minutes and can identify microbial species by their colour on chromogenic plates.
It has a CCD camera combined with three colour LED lighting, rapidly images colony colours on one plate.
Protos 3 attaches via USB to a computer, where microbiologists can input plate identification and with the one-click colony counting and chromogenic ID software can analyse plate types.
The count results can be transferred to Excel where the count, plate ID and images can be saved.
