A new, completely defined medium for meat lactobacilli

A new defined medium (DML) for meat lactobacilli is presented. This succinate buffered medium with as few as 34 components supported good growth for 61 strains of typical meat lactobacilli, both isolated from meat and used as meat starters. For many of the strains tested, cell densities in DML were similar to those achieved in MRS medium. The high buffer capacity of DML and the balanced amino acid content allowed growth to continue to higher densities than eight other defined media. DML is compared with a previously published defined medium for Lactobacillus sake and shown to support higher cell densities of all strains tested. DML will allow a better determination of the nutritional requirements of different strains of meat lactobacilli as all strains can be tested under the same conditions, and will also be suitable for the study of growth kinetics and production of different metabolites.