Enumeration & identification of Clostridium perfringens in raw and final waters using two types of media

Abstract

Cl. perfringens is a recognised indicator of faecal water pollution. There are several media that can be employed for the membrane filtration enumeration of this microorganism and so the main aim of this project was to investigate the ability of the new commercial Oxoid media, mCP, for recovering Cl. perfringens from drinking water, saline and river waters in comparison with an alternative, TSC Agar. In the Directive 98/83 mCP is the listed reference method for the analysis of Cl. perfringens and therefore all other similar methods must prove at least equivalent. This project also tried to determine if there was any correlation between Cl. perfringens and coliforms in the environmental samples. It was found the Cl. perfringens recovery efficiencies with TSC were significantly greater (P<0.001) than the corresponding values of mCP. TSC agar was found to be a better medium for large volumes of samples and was equivalent if not far better than mCP Medium. There was only a poor correlation found between coliforms and Cl. perfringens in environmental samples.