|
Method | Test |
|
Anatomical | Microscopical observation of anatomical structures. For example, spores, conidia, flagella, plastids, and hyphal form. |
Culture characters | Analysis of culture morphology in plate culture. For example, pigmentation, abundance of sporulation, presence or absence of sectors, or abnormal growth |
Growth rate | Measurement of radial growth of fungi and other mycelial organisms in plate culture [9] |
Cell density | Cell counts at set time points using microscopical counting methods, flow cytometry of spectrophotometric approaches |
Molecular integrity | PCR fingerprinting approaches (ISSR, AFLP) which assess the whole genome [10, 11] |
Viability of cells | The use of chromatogenic or fluorogenic viability indicators. Many available, commonly used ones for fungi and bacteria include fluorescein diacetate (FDA), 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) [12] fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC), FUN-1 viability staining |
Enzymic capacity | APIZYM utilisation of naphthyl-bound substrates that yield a chromatogenic change [13, 14] |
| 4-methylumbelliferone [15ā17] |
Metabolic stability | High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) of secondary metabolites [18] |
| Thin layer chromatography (TLC) of secondary metabolites [18, 19] |
Pathogenicity | The target organisms are inoculated onto test media with the potential control strain (or metabolite/protein extract from the control strain)/or directly onto a plant or animal, and the extent of pathogenicity and mortality are recorded. |
|