According
to a recent report in Nature, both
Thermo Fisher and Millipore Sigma have stopped selling pure standalone
bacteriological agar in order to conserve supplies for their more popular
product lines where it's in combination with growth nutrients. The companies
will prioritise more-popular products that contain a mixture of agar and growth
nutrients.
The
reason is that poor growth of the seaweed Gelidium
has led to harvesting restrictions being imposed in order to conserve stocks
and what agar that is produced mostly goes to the food industry as a thickening
agent so the media manufacturers have to compete for supplies.
One
site, Industrias Roko in Polígono de Silvota, Spain, produces 40% of the
seaweed used to make agar.
Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle
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