Ingredients used in Microbiological Media The Manufacture and Purpose of These Ingredients put a list of jumps to agar, petontes etc All formulas refer to one liter. The early microbiologists used the foods available for homes and restaurants as foods for their bacteria. They supplemented these with blood, fruit juices and other mateials found in the environment where they found the bacteria, yeasts, and fungi they wished to study. Any microbiological medium and environment must provide everything the species under cultivation requires. Many bacteria can use glucose as energy and carbon sources.
Some bacteria can use light as energy source and others can oxidize sulfur as energy source.
As nitrogen source, most bacteria require protein, peptides, or amino acids, but many can use ammonia, nitrates or nitrogen molecules. Some organisms can make almost everything them need, but others require a long list of vitamins and required factors. Some metabolize their food down to carbon dioxide and water, others have very limited in disimilatory metabolism and leave their food practically untouched. Bacteria used in food processing typically are able to use only a few of the components of the food they used to process. Knowledge of what a bacterium needs helps you design a medium for growing it.