Development of miniaturized agar based assays in 96-well microplates applicable to high-throughput screening of industrially valuable microorganisms

High-throughput screening (HTS) is a present-day approach for assaying thousands of cultures in parallel. This miniaturization allows rapid screening of large number of microorganims capable of producing bio-based materials thereby meeting the demands of the ever evolving food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry. In this study, agar-based assays for phosphate solubilization, cellulose degradation and lactic acid production were developed in 96-well microplates using Biomek FX^P Automated Liquid Handling system. Techno-economic analysis from this study reveals the lower overall cost per assay using HTS as compared to conventional Petri plate assays. Though automated liquid handling workstations have been used to perform liquid-based assays, there are very few studies which report their use for agar-based microplate assays. These findings thus corroborate the establishment of rapid and efficient miniaturized, qualitative agar-based screening methods for identifying microorganisms with potential for commercial application.