hello all,

i am currently facing a big trouble with contamination in my culture plate. i am currently working with Trichophyton rubrum, Microsporum canis. i usually do well diffusion assay to assess the antifungal activity of plant extract. i use autoclaved swabs to swab the fungi all over the plate. initially, the fungi was growing well, but suddenly, the morphology of the fungi is changed, they started to grow in 2 days which was supposed to grow in 7 days. this is how i understood they are contamiantions.

the sterilisation precautions i take are as follows.

wiping the bio safety cabinet with 70% ethanol

uv irradiation for 30 minutes

handwash with 70% ethanol .

wearing gloves and facemask.

once inside the biosafety cabinet, then i wash my hands with 70% ethanol everytime i take my hands off.

and i always keep the flame on when i work.

can somebody tell me where i might have gone wrong with this process?

also is there any purification process like quadrant streaking of bacterial consortia to purify bacteria. i need such method to purify the fungi from the other. atleast that way i dont have spend more on buying the culture again.

thank you in advance