连续培养又叫开放培养，是相对分批培养或密闭培养而言的。连续培养是采用有效的措施让微生物在某特定的环境中保持旺盛生长状态的培养方法.

具体地说，当微生物以单批培养的方式培养到指数期的后期时，一方面以一定速度连续流入新鲜培养基和通入无菌空气，并立即搅拌均匀；另一方面，利用溢流的方式，以同样的流速不断流出培养物。于是容器内的培养物就可达到动态平衡，其中的微生物可长期在指数期的平衡生长状态和衡定的生长速率上，于是形成了连续生长。

微生物在一定条件下，如果不断补充营养物质和排除有害的代谢产物，理论上，微生物都可保持恒定的对数生长.通常采用两种方式：（１）恒浊培养，当微生物在恒浊器中培养进入对数期时，不断从外界加入新鲜培养基，而同时又流出培养物，用光电池信号控制浊度，以维持恒定的细胞密度.（２）恒化培养，微生物在恒化器中培养，通过控制恒化器中微生物生长所必需营养物的浓度，以保证微生物持续生长.连续培养应用于工业发酵中称连续发酵，并已实际应用，例如，连续发酵法生产酒精，半连续发酵法生产丙酮、丁醇等.GOOGLE英文翻译:The adoption of effective measures to allow micro-organisms in a particular environment to maintain strong growth of the state of training methods. Microorganism under certain conditions, if the continuous supply of nutrients and removal of harmful metabolites, in theory, micro-organisms can remain constant growth of the logarithm of . commonly used in two ways: (1) constant turbid culture, when the micro-organisms cultivated at constant turbidity device into the right number of periods, and constantly adding fresh medium from the outside world, while at the same time out of cultures, the battery light signal control turbidity, in order to maintain a constant cell density (2). chemostat cultivation of microorganisms in the chemostat culture, by controlling the growth of microorganisms in chemostat necessary for the concentration of nutrients in order to ensure sustained growth of microorganisms. used in industrial fermentation in continuous culture said the continuous fermentation, and has practical applications, for example, continuous production of fermentation alcohol, semi-continuous fermentation production of acetone, butanol, and so on.