Streaking (microbiology)

In microbiology, streaking is a technique used to isolate a pure strain from a single species of microorganism, often bacteria. Samples can then be taken from the resulting colonies and a microbiological culture can be grown on a new plate so that the organism can be identified, studied, or tested.

The modern streak plate method has progressed from the efforts of Robert Koch and other microbiologists to obtain microbiological cultures of bacteria in order to study them. The dilution or isolation by streaking method was first developed in Koch's laboratory by his two assistants Friedrick Loeffler and Georg Theodor August Gaffky. This method involves the dilution of bacteria by systematically streaking them over the exterior of the agar in a Petri dish to obtain isolated colonies which will then grow into quantity of cells, or isolated colonies. If the agar surface grows microorganisms which are all genetically same, the culture is then considered as a microbiological culture.