An enrichment culture is a medium with specific and known qualities that favors the growth of a particular microorganism. The enrichment culture's environment will support the growth of a selected microorganism, while inhibiting the growth of others. Lourens Bass Becking succinctly summarized enrichment cultures' abilities when he said "everything is everywhere; the environment selects."
The microbiologist (and botanist) Martinus Beijerinck is credited with developing the first enrichment cultures. Sergei Winogradsky also experimented on bacteria using different cultures.
Famous quotes containing the words enrichment and/or culture:
“War is a most uneconomical, foolish, poor arrangement, a bloody enrichment of that soil which bears the sweet flower of peace ...”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“Our culture has become something that is completely and utterly in love with its parent. It’s become a notion of boredom that is bought and sold, where nothing will happen except that people will become more and more terrified of tomorrow, because the new continues to look old, and the old will always look cute.”
—Malcolm McLaren (b. 1946)