·        

1.2.  Culture room

The room for maintaining cultures should be maintained at temperature 25 ±2°C, controlled by air conditioners and heaters attached to a temperature controller are used. For higher or lower temperature treatments, special incubators with built-in fluorescent light can be used outside the culture room. Cultures are generally grown in diffuse light from cool, white, fluorescent tubes. Lights can be controlled with automatic time clocks. Generally, a 16-hour day and 8-hour nights are used. The culture room requires specially designed shelving to store cultures. Some laboratories have shelves along the walls, others have them fitted onto angle-iron frames placed in a convenient position. Shelves can be made of rigid wire mesh, wood or any building material that can be kept clean and dust-free. Insulation between the shelf lights and the shelf above will ensure an even temperature around the cultures. While flasks, jars and petridishes can be placed directly on the shelf or trays of suitable sizes, culture tubes require some sort of support. Metallic wire racks or polypropylene racks, each with a holding capacity of 18-24 tubes, are suitable for the purpose.

Figure 2.2: Culture room facility with humidifier, timer, wall cabinets, illuminated trolleys and                     test-tube racks