“…It was not investigated if this was linked to the direct inoculation of freeze-dried cells rather than a fresh liquid culture. It has been shown that cfu counts following rehydration are highly influenced with the osmolarity of the reconstitution fluid (Choate & Alexander, 1967), the rehydration temperature (Morichi, Irie, Yano, & Kembo, 1967) as well as by the rate and volume of medium used for rehydration (De Valdez, De Giori, De Ruiz Holgado, & Olivier, 1985). Although viability losses upon inoculation occurred, the use of lyophilised cells was maintained for our assays because it is the usual procedure used in industry.…”