Malt Extract Agar Premix (100 Grams) Makes 100 Agar Plates

PDA gets the name recognition. MEA is what serious cultivators actually reach for.

Malt Extract Agar is the preferred formulation for mushroom mycelium specifically because malt extract is a carbohydrate source that fungi metabolize efficiently — producing faster, more vigorous growth than the potato-dextrose base used in general microbiology plates. If you are working with mushroom species and you want to see what your culture is actually capable of, MEA gives you a cleaner read than PDA.

This is a premix. The malt extract and agar are already combined at the correct ratio — no measuring, no sourcing separate ingredients, no guessing. Mix with water, sterilize, pour. Each 100-gram bag produces approximately 75 to 100 standard petri dishes depending on pour thickness. Thicker pours extend shelf life. Thinner pours stretch your supply further. Both work.

The premix is packaged in a HEPA-filtered enclosure. That matters — agar powder that picks up contamination before it ever reaches your lab is a problem you cannot fix downstream.

What you can do with it:

• Pour plates for mycelial isolation and sector work
• Clone fruiting bodies via tissue culture
• Test liquid culture and spore solution before committing to grain
• Build and maintain a multi-species culture library
• Run agar-to-agar transfers to clean up contaminated cultures

Use it with a pressure cooker, pour inside your SAB, seal with lab film. The full protocol is covered in our agar guide on the blog.

Weight: 100g. Yield: ~75–100 standard petri dishes. Formulation: Malt Extract Agar. Packaged: In a HEPA-filtered enclosure.

One bag. Enough plates to build something worth keeping.