The second set of experiments tested the ability of agar
plates prepared from plant juices to replicate and support
the growth of a wide array of RMO colonies originally developed
on agar plates of reference culture media. For this purpose,
RMO associated to roots of maize and sugar beet were
cultured, using the surface-inoculation method and agar plates
prepared from tested reference culture media [13]. The conventional
replica technique of Lederberg and Lederberg [15] was
adjusted and employed. Hundreds of 72-h-old RMO colonies
developed on master agar plates, those prepared from all
tested reference culture media with an average of 20–
50 cfu plate1, were progressively stamped (5–7 times) onto
agar plates of the tested plant juices. During a week of incubation
at 30 C, the successfully replicated colonies were monitored
on the various combinations of plant juice agar plates
and percentage recovery was calculated.