Culture Media and Growth Conditions
Plate Count Agar (Oxoid, Basingstoke, UK) was used
for the total bacterial count. After sampling, the agar plates
were incubated aerobically at 378C for 48 h. After incubation,
the numbers of bacterial colonies on the agar plates
were counted, and the cfu m3 was calculated. However, if
too many colonies formed on the agar plates, some of them
might overlap making the plate difficult to count. When that
was the case, the sampling time would be reduced to 5 min.