0973-7510 Journal of Pure and Applied Microbiology 2581-690X DR. M.N. Khan 10.22207/JPAM.14.1.01 Time to Automate the Microbial Detection and Identification: The Status Quo Iqbal Hafiz M. N Bilal Muhammad Tecnologico de Monterrey, School of Engineering and Sciences, Campus Monterrey, Ave. Eugenio Garza Sada 2501, CP 64849 Monterrey, N.L., Mexico School of Life Science and Food Engineering, Huaiyin Institute of Technology, Huaian 223003, China. 03 03 2020 14 1 01 03 Copyright © 2020 The Author(s) 2020 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/