Cultures were preserved at 4 C for short-term maintenance.
For the preparation of liquid cultures a sterile malt extract
solution (malt extract 30 g, peptone 5 g, 1000 ml distilled water,
supplemented with 0.1% antifoam agent, pH 6.5) was used, inoculated
with the biomass extracted from three days old cultures on
malt extract agar plates, and incubated at 25 C at 150 rpm for
two days. Sporogenesis was carried out on a solid matrix according
to the procedure described in