agar plate

noun

plural agar plates

: a usually sterile petri dish filled with a prepared solid growth medium of agar mixed with nutrients

The vector will replicate within the bacteria that are then spread onto the surface of an agar plate.

—John Goldman

Examples of agar plate in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

His experiment started with a small colony of Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria growing on an agar plate in his lab — a small, whitish dot, roughly the size of the period at the end of this sentence. —Carrie Arnold, Quanta Magazine, 21 Apr. 2025

Inside the lab’s incubators are thousands of agar plates, on which 17 different species of fungi—some of which have never been cultivated before—are growing in colorful splashes. —Alexa Phillips, WIRED, 16 Dec. 2024

Its discovery was considered accidental; Fleming noticed that fungus growing on an agar plate appeared to be inhibiting the growth of bacteria. —Jenny Sweigard, Verywell Health, 16 Nov. 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1887, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for agar plate

• abdicate
• abrogate
• acetate
• activate
• actuate
• adsorbate
• aggravate
• agitate
• alginate
• alienate
• allocate
• amputate

Medical Definition

agar plate

noun

: a usually sterile petri dish filled with a prepared solid growth medium of agar mixed with nutrients

The results of this study suggest that immediate inoculation of a swab on an agar plate is necessary to obtain the optimum number of viable colonies.

—L. Price et al., British Journal of Biomedical Science