You collected a sample of soil from your backyard to use for asa source of inoculum for your isolate project, and want to useplating technique to determine the number of microbes present.Based on what you know about microbial cell counts in soilenvironments, you estimate that there might be up to 1010 cells perg of soil, but that in many soil samples only a small fraction(0.1-1%) of cells are typically able to be cultured on solidmedium. Outline a dilution and plating procedure that you could useto obtain an appropriate number of colonies on a plate to quantifymicrobes in this soil sample. Include the type of plating techniqueyou would use, the type of media that you would use, the specificdilutions and volumes that you would plate, the targeted number ofcolonies you would want on a plate for accurate quantification, andthe units you would use to report your results. Assume that youhave sterile buffered saline solution for use as a diluent.
