pure culture

American  

noun

1. the growth of only one microorganism in a culture.

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pure culture British  

noun

1. bacteriol a culture containing a single species of microorganism

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Etymology

Origin of pure culture

First recorded in 1890–95

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

pure culture

"The fact that we could never get these organisms into pure culture is probably because they always depend on other organisms to survive," he says.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 3, 2026

For all of these reasons, pure culture is not always the best way to study microorganisms.

From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022

“If we had a pure culture, it would be a lot easier” to test ideas about cell metabolism and environmental influences on conductance, says the center’s Andreas Schramm.

From Science Magazine ● Aug. 19, 2020

Denmark’s Carlsberg brewery established one of the world’s first yeast-biology labs in 1875, and it was there that Emil Christian Hansen isolated the first pure culture of a brewing yeast in 1883.

From Nature ● Jul. 25, 2016

The condition inside the uterus resembled in every respect that observed in the cow from which the original culture had been isolated, and the bacillus was present in pure culture.

From Contagious Abortion of Cows by Ward J. MacNeal