Growth medium
liquid or gel used for the growth of microorganisms or cells
A growth medium or culture medium is a solid, liquid, or semi-solid designed to support the growth of a population of microorganisms or cells via the process of cell proliferation or small plants like the moss Physcomitrella patens. Different types of media are used for growing different types of cells.
The two major types of growth media are those used for cell culture, which use specific cell types derived from plants or animals, and those used for microbiological culture, which are used for growing microorganisms such as bacteria or fungi. The most common growth media for microorganisms are nutrient broths and agar plates; specialized media are sometimes required for microorganism and cell culture growth. Some organisms, termed fastidious organisms, require specialized environments due to complex nutritional requirements. Viruses, for example, are obligate intracellular parasites and require a growth medium containing living cells.
Types
The most common growth media for microorganisms are nutrient broths (liquid nutrient medium) or lysogeny broth medium. Liquid media are often mixed with agar and poured via a sterile media dispenser into Petri dishes to solidify. These agar plates provide a solid medium on which microbes may be cultured. They remain solid, as very few bacteria are able to decompose agar (the exception being some species in the genera: Cytophaga, Flavobacterium, Bacillus, Pseudomonas, and Alcaligenes).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Growth medium” is liquid or gel used for the growth of microorganisms or cells. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Growth, medium and liquid, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q575920. The Library of Congress control number is sh85034761. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Growth medium” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.