I want to measure different types of microbes such as fungi,bacteria,actinomycetes etc during poultry litter composting. My queries are - what are the procedures and when? are there any articles which help me to measure the aforesaid?
Dear Dr Abu Khayer,
Microbial populations are evaluated by serial dilution on Martin’s rose bengal-agar for fungi (Martin, 1950), Thornton’s agar for aerobic cultivable bacteria (Thornton, 1922) and Ken-Knight agar for actinomycetes (Allen, 1959).
Based on my recent research on "Composting of Apple Scab (Venturia inaequalis) Infected Leaves with Dairy Manure", I measured microbial populations at the initial and final stage of composting with my colloquies. (not published yet).
You could also use molecular methods such as quantitative PCR to get information about the absolute number of each type of microbe, including the unculturable portion. Information about community interactions can be garnered through next generation sequencing (amplicon based or metagenomics). Molecular methods are more thorough and complicated than plate counts, though, so it all depends on how much information you want and effort you're willing to spend.
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