Working Party on Quality Assurance and Quality Monitoring of Culture Media

A "Working Party on Quality Assurance and Quality Monitoring of Culture Media" was initiated and approved by the plenary session during the International Microbiology Congress in Munich in 1978. Terms of reference were to elaborate a "Medium Pharmacopoeia", including recommendations for 1-3 media for specific purposes, as a result of consensus meetings of a limited group of experts. Recommendations were to be updated periodically. A number of successful meetings were organised (amongst others) in Calla de Mallorca, Dalls/Texas, London, Manchester, Pécs, Heidelberg, Prague, Budapest, Ljubljana, and, most recently (August 2006), in Bologna. The scope of activities was widened gradually. A number of publications have been issued, e.g. as "Pharmacopoeia" in two special issues of IJFM, and as book "Culture Media for Food Microbiology" (eds. Corry, Curtis and Baird, within the series "Progress in Industrial Microbiology", Vol. 34, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1995). The second revised and extended issue was published by Elsevier in 2003.

For more information, please contact: Gordon Curtis (Convenor, ICFMH-WPCM), gdwcurtis@tiscali.co.uk