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Total viable count

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Total viable count (TVC), gives a quantitative estimate of the concentration of microorganisms such as bacteria, yeast or mould spores in a sample. The count represents the number of colony forming units (cfu) per g (or per ml) of the sample.

A TVC is achieved by plating serial tenfold dilutions of the sample until between 30 and 300 colonies can be counted on a single plate. The reported count is the number of colonies counted multiplied by the dilution used for the counted plate

A high TVC count indicates a high concentration of micro-organisms which may indicate poor quality for drinking water or foodstuff.

In food microbiology it is used as a benchmark for the evaluation of the shelf-life of foodstuffs [1]

References

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  1. ^ Biyani, Manish; Tamiya, Eiichi; Takamura, Yuzuru; Saito, Masato; Ushijima, Hiromi; Biyani, Radhika; Biyani, Madhu (2018-04-05). "Instant enumeration of total viable bacterial counts for food quality assurance using 'DEP-On-Go' sensor. Its scope is as an assessment tool rather than focus towards a specific organism". Analytical Methods. 10 (14). Royal Society of Chemistry: 1585–1592. doi:10.1039/C7AY02927F.