"The pure culture is the foundation for all research"

According to Robert Koch, Nobel prize winner and often considered the founder of modern Bacteriology. Koch made important breakthroughs with infectious disease such as Anthrax, Cholera and Tuberculosis. His ideas are still considered important and are used in teaching to this day.

Robert Koch (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

So it it with theme of purity that I mention our new addition to the Jack Ward Laboratory, a Bassaire KV4 vertical laminar flow, which arrived today. Laminar flow cabinets are used in microbiology work to ensure a clean environment is maintained and that no external microbial contamination occurs. 

Laminar Cabinet in place in the Jack Ward laboratory 

They are quite simple in function with a fan sucking air through a high specification filter to remove all aerial contaminants. The clean air is then pushed down into the cabinet, where it is spills out over the work bench. This over-pressure of clean air reduces the contamination of agar plates, ensuring that only the organisms that you are interested in, actually grow on the plates.

We will be using the Laminar flow cabinet initially in the study of lactic acid bacteria. This year my colleague Andrew Atkinson will be investigation the growth of lactic acid bacteria that have a tolerance for low pH and high acidity. We will assessing how well they perform in the harsh acidic conditions of English Sparkling base wines. Hopefully we will be able to establish which strains perform best according to both pH and sulphite tolerance. Interestingly some of the strains we will be testing have originated in the UK, having previously been isolated by Plumpton College students Gwen McCann, David Joyce and Emma Waldron.

  


 

Jack Ward laboratory at Plumpton College

A tweet by  Dr Belinda Kemp an ex-Plumpton student and more recently ex-lecturer who is now senior scientist at CCOVI Brock University, led me to a recent paper about English & Welsh Winemaking.  In Hugh Clout's article, he outlines some of the important history of the local wine industry.  It makes mention of Jack Ward and the Merrydown drinks company and the important role they played in bring viticulture/oenology back to Britain after it had died out in the early 20th Century.

Fast forward to September 2013 and the Plumpton College wine department is about to expand into its new wing.  The new building has been under construction for just over a year, and will incorporate two significant spaces.  The first is the Rathfinny research winery, a new micro-vinification facility for conducting trials by students and researchers.  This new area was funded by generous donations from Sarah & Mark Driver of Rathfinny Estate, who also gets a mention in Hugh's article.

Rathfinny research winery 

The second area is a newly expanded laboratory for teaching and research, which was made possible by a donation from the Merrydown trust.  This laboratory will be named the Jack Ward laboratory to honour his contribution.

Jack Ward laboratory

Along with these new additions, the changes inspired by the construction have also allowed some additional expansion to the HE student area of the College.  So our students will soon be benefiting from a larger common room, group study rooms and enlarged computer suite.

New HE Computing suite

So the HE students will be here shortly and they will get to study in this area that links to the past with the future, which has all be made possible through the generosity of their predecessors.    

For more information on the project, as well as information how you can assist please go to the Plumpton College Wine Research Centre homepage