Question

You inoculate two different nutrient broth (NB) tubes with the same bacterial type from two different sources - plates culture and liquid culture. The NB culture incoculated from the plate culture shows more growth as revealed by the greated amount of turbidity (cloudiness) compared to the NB inoculated from the liquid culture. Suggest a couple of reasons why this difference occurred.

Answer 1

Some bacterial type are adapted to grow favourably on  substratum compared to liquid medium.

Aerobic bacteria preferrs liquid media due to more surface area : volume ratio giving high oxygen supply whereas other bacteria that does not require high oxygen supply gives high density on plate

Some bacteria culture in aggregates so better growth in plates. for eg. the increased survival rates seen for P. aeruginosa cultures inoculated directly from colonies on plates are in accordance with the findings that these cultures had more aggregated biomass

Liquid grown-populations are relatively homogeneous and thus distinct from biofilm-grown bacteria for which nutrient agar is more suitable.

In some antibiotic containing media, aggregated culture show some resistance whereas in liquid media homogenous culture are not resistant