Replica plating

Replica plating is a microbiological technique in which one or more secondary Petri plates containing different solid (agar-based) selective growth media (lacking nutrients or containing chemical growth inhibitors such as antibiotics) are inoculated with the same colonies of microorganisms from a primary plate (or master dish), reproducing the original spatial pattern of colonies.

By increasing the variety of secondary plates with different selective growth media, it is possible to rapidly screen a large number of individual isolated colonies for as many phenotypes as there are secondary plates.

Paper was unsatisfactory as "its lateral capillarity and its compression of the colonies distorted and broke up the original growth pattern.

", and nylon velvet was too expensive and its stiffer fibers caused problems, leading to the choice and eventual standardization on cotton velveteen.

[2] While first demonstrated with bacteria, velveteen based replica plating has also become a standard technique in the microbiology of eukaryotes, such as yeast.