The streak plating technique isolates individual bacterial cells (colony-forming units) on the surface of an agar plate using a wire loop. The streaking patterns shown in the figure below result in continuous dilution of the inoculum to give well separated surface colonies. Once again, the idea is to obtain isolated colonies after incubation of the plate.
1. Label two nutrient agar plates No. 1 and No. 2.
2. Prepare two streak plates by following two of the 3 streaking patterns shown in the figure below. Use the 10-1 dilution as inoculum.
3. Invert the plates and incubate at room temperature until the next lab period.