Compact Dry^R X-BC for the Enumeration of Bacillus cereus in Food Samples

Abstract

We evaluated the effectiveness of using Compact Dry^R X-BC (CD-XBC), a ready-to-use and self-diffusing dry medium sheet culture system based on a novel detection principle, for the detection and enumeration of Bacillus cereus. All 13 B. cereus strains, which were studied for the inclusivity study, grew as blue/green colonies on the CD-XBC. When 3 yeast strains and 103 bacterial strains other than B. cereus were tested for the exclusivity study, 5 strains formed white colonies, and 4 strains formed blue/green colonies, while 94 other strains failed to grow. The 4 strains that formed blue/green colonies were B. thuringiensis, which is known to have the same biochemical features as B. cereus. The CD-XBC method was compared with the MYP agar method (MYP) and the NGKG agar method (NGKG) in 130 artificially contaminated food samples. The correlation coefficients between CD-XBC and MYP, and CD-XBC and NGKG were 0.972 and 0.971, respectively.