Abstract: To establish a microplate assay for quick diagnosis and antibiotic sensitivity measurement of bovine mastitis-causing E.coli,the phenol red indicator in E.coli selective medium was replaced with resazurin and the resazurin microplate assay was established by determing of optimization of indicator concentration,bacterial inoculation dose and culture time.The testing results of different bacteria and their infection-mimicking milk samples showed that the microplate assay had a strong selective property for E.coli and the definite diagnostic result could be obtained within 10 h with a capability of reflecting infection strength of dairy cow mammary gland.The results of 89 mastitis-positive milk samples showed that the microplate assay had a detection sensitivity of 100%,and the negative milk samples specificity was 94.9%,95.5% agreement to the conventional culture-based method.The micoplates were coated with rectified concentrations of 10 different antibiotics and the quick drug sensitivity assay was performed using 10 E.coli strains,infection-mimicking milk samples and 10 E.coli-positive milk samples.The obtained results had a complete agreement with that of standard disc diffusion method.These data suggested that the resazurin microplate assay established in this study could replace the conventional methods for quick diagnosis and antibiotic sensitivity measurement of bovine mastitis-causing E.coli.

Key words: bovine mastitis; E.coli; resazurin microplate; quick diagnosis; antibiotic sensitivity test