Surface-sterilized samples containing endophytic bacteria are ground with sterile water, and serial dilutions are prepared and plated on Luria-Bertani (LB) medium or other bacterial media and grown at 28-37°C for a few days. It is advantageous to add a fungicide such as Benomyl (DuPont) at 50 gg/ ml to the bacterial culture media to prevent fungal growth, particularly if there are fungal contaminations (Coombs and Franco 2003). Observations should be taken every day in order to isolate individual colonies for further identification. Individual colonies are streaked and re-grown two additional times to obtain pure bacterial strains.