Questions & Answers

No, you do not need to add a frit to all samples. Only samples that have debris in the tube after heat-treatment need a frit. It is advisable to check all tubes after heat-treatment to establish if frits are required.

Use a frit in any sample that has significant debris in the sample tube after heat-treatment.

High fat and high protein foods may develop debris as they are heated and cooled. It is therefore very important to allow the sample to cool, to allow fats to solidify, before adding a frit to the tube. If a frit is added prior to fats solidifying then the frit will have no filtering effect and clogging may still occur during liquid transfer into the assay plate.

A frit is a small round filter disk. It fits snuggly into the polypropylene tubes that Solus supply for heat treating sample aliquots. It can be used to prevent food debris from blocking pipette tips during transfer from the sample tubes to the Solus assay plate. This may be particularly useful for single enrichment protocols.

For more information on frits, why not watch our short video?

No. If you want to be certain of detecting any pathogens in the samples then the incubation times advised by Solus must be adhered to.

Solus have conducted rigorous testing to determine the best incubation parameters to ensure you get the most reliable results from our pathogen testing systems. Our system already offers a minimum of a 4 hour test window to give you some flexibility.

Please see our article here for further explanation of how we determine our incubation parameters.

Solus Pathogen Detection Systems offer food testing laboratories a highly efficient method for the detection of Salmonella, Listeria and E. coli O157 in food and environmental samples. Our pathogen detection systems comprise specifically designed immunoassay kits, dedicated selective enrichment media and automated liquid handling.

Learn more about our Pathogen Detection System