Which fly food recipes does the calculator support?

Five canonical recipes: (1) Bloomington standard cornmeal-molasses, (2) Nutri-Fly Bloomington formulation (Genesee Scientific powder), (3) Caltech standard food (Karo corn syrup), (4) German food (high-yeast, soya flour), (5) Sugar-yeast minimal defined diet (Bass et al. 2007). Each includes the canonical per-liter ingredient list and the cooking procedure.

Why does the calculator add a "prep loss" margin?

Cooked fly food sticks to the pot, the dispensing tubing, and the rim of every vial. A typical loss is 5–15% depending on equipment and batch size. The default 10% margin is a safe starting point — increase it for hand-dispensed batches or decrease for pump-dispensed bottles.

Why are propionic acid and tegosept added after cooling?

Both are antifungals that are heat-labile. Propionic acid evaporates rapidly above 80 °C, and tegosept (methyl 4-hydroxybenzoate) decomposes at extended high heat. The standard practice is to cool the food to ~65 °C — warm enough to keep agar liquid for dispensing, cool enough to preserve antifungal activity — then mix them in just before dispensing.

What if my batch is very small?

For batches under ~200 mL, pipetting precision becomes the dominant error. The calculator flags small batches with a warning. The fix is usually to scale up the prep and freeze excess vials, or use a defined-diet formulation where ingredient mass error is less critical.

Can I substitute ingredients?

Common substitutions: Karo light corn syrup ↔ molasses (slightly lower sugar density, lower color), inactive yeast brand swaps are usually fine, and tegosept ↔ nipagin are equivalent. Do NOT substitute agar with gelatin (different gel strength) or skip the antifungals (mold takeover within days at 25 °C).

Drosophila Food Recipe Calculator

Scale Bloomington, Nutri-Fly, Caltech, German, or sugar-yeast minimal Drosophila food recipes to any vial or bottle batch. Step-by-step procedure with heat-labile additions called out separately.

Drosophila StocksBloomington RecipeClient-Side

Tool info

Tool information

About, related tools, and citation

About This Tool

Method: Each recipe is encoded with its canonical per-liter ingredient amounts from the published source. Total prepared volume = (containers $\times$ volume_per_container) $\times$ (1 + loss_factor). Each ingredient is scaled linearly to the prepared liters and rounded to 0.1 g (solids) or 0.01 mL (liquids).
Last Validated: 2026-04-06
Privacy: 100% client-side

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How to Cite

ConductScience Drosophila Food Recipe Calculator (v0.92.0). ConductScience, Inc. 2026. Available at: https://conductscience.com/tools/drosophila-food-recipe-calculator

Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center. Bloomington Food Recipe. Indiana University. https://bdsc.indiana.edu/information/recipes/bloomfood.html

Bass TM, Grandison RC, Wong R, et al. Optimization of dietary restriction protocols in Drosophila melanogaster. Mech Ageing Dev. 2007;128(10):546-552.

Why This Tool?

This calculator encodes the five canonical Drosophila food recipes (Bloomington standard, Nutri-Fly Bloomington, Caltech, German, sugar-yeast minimal) with the canonical per-liter ingredient amounts. Pick a recipe, enter your batch size, and the calculator scales every ingredient and shows the cooking procedure with the heat-labile additions called out separately.

Tool details, related tools, and citation

About This Tool

Method: Each recipe is encoded with its canonical per-liter ingredient amounts from the published source. Total prepared volume = (containers $\times$ volume_per_container) $\times$ (1 + loss_factor). Each ingredient is scaled linearly to the prepared liters and rounded to 0.1 g (solids) or 0.01 mL (liquids).
Last Validated: 2026-04-06
Privacy: 100% client-side

Related Tools

How to Cite

ConductScience Drosophila Food Recipe Calculator (v0.92.0). ConductScience, Inc. 2026. Available at: https://conductscience.com/tools/drosophila-food-recipe-calculator

Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center. Bloomington Food Recipe. Indiana University. https://bdsc.indiana.edu/information/recipes/bloomfood.html

Bass TM, Grandison RC, Wong R, et al. Optimization of dietary restriction protocols in Drosophila melanogaster. Mech Ageing Dev. 2007;128(10):546-552.

Why This Tool?

Try it out

Load example drosophila food recipe calculator data to see the full workflow

Recipe & Containers

Recipe

Source: Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center

Container type

Number of containers

Fill volume per container (mL)

Prep loss margin (%)

Extra food cooked to absorb residue and dispensing loss.

Ingredient List

Total food

1000 mL

100 × 10.0 mL

Prepared (with loss)

1100 mL

1.10 L water

Recipe

Bloomington standard cornmeal/molasses

Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center

Ingredient	Amount	When to add	Notes
Cornmeal (yellow)	80.3 g	During cook
Inactive yeast	19.8 g	During cook
Agar	6.4 g	During cook
Molasses (unsulfured)	82.5 mL	During cook
Propionic acid	4.84 mL	After cooling to 65°C	Antifungal, heat-labile
Tegosept (10% in EtOH)	16.06 mL	After cooling to 65°C	Antifungal, heat-labile

Procedure

Hydrate agar in cold water; bring to a rolling boil with constant stirring.
Add cornmeal, yeast, and molasses; cook 10–15 min until thickened.
Cool to ~65 °C, then add propionic acid and tegosept and mix well.
Dispense into vials/bottles and allow to set at room temperature.

Scaling a published Drosophila food recipe to your batch size
Onboarding new lab members to fly food prep
Standardizing food prep across multiple labs in a department
Checking ingredient totals before a large weekly food cook
Generating an ingredient shopping list for a new lab

Don't use for

For commercial fly food kits with proprietary formulations not listed here
For nutritional studies that require gram-level precision (use a defined diet)
For batches above ~25 L (commercial fly facilities use industrial mixers)

Drosophila Food Recipes — Background

Drosophila labs around the world use a small number of canonical food recipes, all variants of the cornmeal-molasses-yeast-agar template originally developed for the Caltech and Bloomington stock centers in the 1950s.

Bloomington standard

The reference recipe maintained by the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center. Cornmeal 73 g/L, inactive yeast 18 g/L, agar 5.8 g/L, molasses 75 mL/L, plus propionic acid and tegosept antifungals. This is the closest thing to a community standard, and it is what most published methods sections cite when they say "standard food."

Nutri-Fly (Genesee Scientific)

A pre-mixed powder version of the Bloomington recipe. Easier to prepare in resource-limited or undergraduate teaching labs. Slightly different ratios but functionally equivalent.

Caltech

Higher cornmeal and yeast, uses Karo corn syrup instead of molasses. Common in older neuroscience labs.

German food

Higher yeast and includes soya flour. Used at most European stock centers and gives faster development for some lines.

Sugar-yeast minimal

Defined diet of sucrose + inactive yeast + agar. Used in dietary restriction, lifespan, and nutrition studies where the cornmeal background must be eliminated.

Cooking & Dispensing Tips

Fly food cooking is more art than science but the failure modes are predictable.

Hydrate the agar in cold water first

Adding agar to hot water clumps. Mix it into cold water, then bring to a rolling boil with constant stirring. The agar should be fully clear before adding solids.

Watch for boil-over

A 5 L batch can boil over within seconds when the cornmeal hits. Use a pot 2–3× the batch volume and stir continuously during the first few minutes after adding solids.

Cool to 65 °C before antifungals

Use a thermocouple, not "feels warm." Above 80 °C the propionic acid evaporates and the tegosept decomposes. Below 50 °C the food starts to set in the pot before you can dispense.

Dispense with a positive-displacement pump

Hand-pouring works for small batches (<2 L) but introduces ±20% volume variance. A peristaltic or syringe pump gets you to ±5% with consistent vial fills.

Plug while still warm

Cellulose acetate plugs absorb residual moisture. Plugging a fully cooled vial traps condensation that can drown the larvae.

Drosophila Food Recipe Calculator

Recipe & Containers

Ingredient List

Procedure

Drosophila Food Recipes — Background

Cooking & Dispensing Tips

Frequently Asked Questions

Next Steps

ConductColony — track stock vial cohorts and food prep schedules

Drosophila Vials & Bottles

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