Abstract Background and Objectives: The objective of this study was to evaluate the clinical applicability of BACTEC Mycobacterial Growth Indicator Tube 960 TM system with Lowenstein-Jensen (LJ) culture for routine recovery and drug susceptibility test analysis of mycobacteria from clinical specimens. Method and Statistical Analysis: One hundred and seven clinical specimens were processed by routine laboratory procedures like p-nitro benzoic acid test and PCR amplification of IS6110 and inoculated in LJ medium and MGIT for mycobacterial growth recovery and DST procedures. Findings: Ninety four (87.8%) samples were demonstrated reproducible result by MGIT, in which 89 (83.1%) were smear positive and all the specimens were confirmed as M. tuberculosis complex by MGIT PNB and IS6110 PCR procedures. The observed mean time for mycobacterial detection was 9 days for primary culture and 11 days for DST in MGIT system. Applications/ Improvements: The use of BACTEC MGIT 960 system was found to be a sensitive, rapid mycobacterial recovery and culture system and offers precise identification and detection of drug resistance from clinical isolates at earliest. Clinical Evaluation of Automated BACTEC MGIT 960 System for Identification, Recovery and Drug Susceptibility Testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Clinical Isolates Thirumurugan Ravibalan 1,2 , Antony V. Samrot 2 , Kathirvel Maruthai 1 , Vallayyachari Kommoju 1 , Surendar Kesavan 1 , Muthuraj Muthaiah 1* 1 Department of Microbiology, Intermediate Reference Laboratory, State TB Training and Demonstration Centre, Government Hospital for Chest Diseases, Gorimedu, Puducherry - 605006, India. 2 Department of Biotechnology, Sathyabama University, Rajiv Gandhi Road, Jeppiaar Nagar, Chennai - 600119, Tamilnadu, India; stdcirlpdy@gmail.com 1. Introduction Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most prevalent infectious diseases in the world 1,2 . In addition, the emergence of multidrug-resistant TB is becoming increasingly com- mon and is a major health concern in many regions of the world, particularly in developing countries 1-4 . Due to the long generation time of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, (Mtb) delays the rapid diagnosis and drug susceptibility analysis impairs the treatment regimen. Rapid, accurate diagnosis and drug susceptibility are a key factors to optimize treat- ment and prevent transmission 5 . It is important to focus rapid culture methods that are more than conventional solid culture procedures time not exceeding 21 days for the isolation and identification of Mtb 6,7 . e commonly followed methods to test TB drug susceptibility is stan- dard proportion method on solid media which relies on the culture of tubercle bacilli but takes long time 6,8 . e automated systems like radiometric BACTEC 460TB and fluorescent BACTEC MGIT 960 TM (MGIT) have shown a significant correlation with conventional methods 8-10 . e MGIT system is an advanced, automated and uninterrupted-monitoring instrument that can test up to 960 MGIT 7-ml vials for the presence of mycobacteria using fluorescence technology 11,12 . erfore we established MGIT as a reference system along with conventional solid *Author for correspondence Indian Journal of Science and Technology, Vol 9(8), DOI: 10.17485/ijst/2016/v9i8/76444, February 2016 ISSN (Print) : 0974-6846 ISSN (Online) : 0974-5645