 A TVC is achieved by plating serial tenfold dilutions of the sample until between 30 and 300 colonies can be counted on a single plate.The reported count is the number of colonies counted multiplied by the dilution used for the counted plate

A high TVC count indicates a high concentration of micro-organisms which may indicate poor quality for drinking water or foodstuff.In food microbiology it is used as a benchmark for the evaluation of the shelf-life of foodstuffs