This monograph has been reviewed by members of the IUMS–ICFMH Working Party on Culture Media and given ‘Proposed’ status.

This reduced water activity medium (a_w 0.95) described by Hocking and Pitt (1980) is suitable for the enumeration and isolation of moderately xerophilic moulds in foods. Dichloran inhibits the rapid spreading of mucoraceous fungi and restricts the colony size of most other genera, thus enabling more accurate counting of colonies. The addition of chloramphenicol and the reduced a_w prevent the growth of bacteria. Although specifically developed to enumerate xerophilic fungi in dried and semi-dried foods, it has proved to be a useful general purpose medium for counting yeasts and moulds in a range of foodstuffs (Beckers et al., 1982). The addition of Triton X-301 (Tapia de Daza and Beuchat, 1992) enables easier enumeration of xerophiles when Eurotium spp. are present (Beuchat and Hwang, 1995).