2.5.3. Liquid-drying
Liquid-drying was performed using a modified version of Malik’s (1990) simplified liquid-drying method.
Briefly, samples were liquid-dried in the outer jars of a VirTis Benchtop K lyophiliser at room temperature in plastic Nunc cryovials instead of glass ampoules, and stored at 22 C inside 50 mL tubes containing 5 g of indicating silica gel desiccant (Alfa Aesar) after drying.
Mesoinositol (5% w/v), skim milk powder (20% w/v) and neutral activated charcoal (2% w/v) were used in the protective solution as described previously for preservation of aerobic thermophiles (Malik, 1998);
however, in this study, the protective solution was used during the preservation of all cultures.
Samples were revived by addition of 1 mL of MBSM and 1 min of gentle mixing using a pipette to rehydrate and resuspend cells (Malik, 1990).