09:35 Jun 5, 2011 

Thanks Dolores, I also found "casting" on Linguee (your other link didn't show anything when I tried to open it), but these are all in the context of casting, moulding, whatever you want to call it, NOT in the context of agar plates. That's why I'm not sure that this is the right term here - you don't cast anything, you pour.

09:31 Jun 5, 2011 

Thanks, Jaime, that's exactly what I think, too. I'm surprised they even list it as a separate item of equipment.

09:20 Jun 5, 2011 

My guess would be that this is not a technical name but one of those neat little German nominalisations that sometimes make German so concise and that can throw us English speakers into confusion. I'd translated it "in longhand" as "the bench used for pouring agar ..." or similar. I could very well be wrong.