A technique for the effective enrichment and isolation of<i>Bacillus thuringiensis</i>

Abstract

An isolation method is described which results in the enrichment of Bacillus thuringiensis compared to other members of the genus Bacillus. This method was compared to previously published methods claimed to have the same effect. We show that our method produced significantly more colonies of B. thuringiensis out of those with a ‘presumptive-positive’ morphology than the other methods tested. The diversity of the strains isolated by our method was investigated. The variability of the strains isolated suggests that the method does not preferentially select one strain or sub-group of B. thuringiensis over others.