Reclaimed water (RW) applied in drip irrigation systems could be a solution to cope with the challenges of limited freshwater resources. Biofilm growth in irrigation systems is an unavoidable issue when using RW. To date, strong chemical bactericides mostly dominate the commercial market in controlling biofilms. However, recently scientists have been concerned about their real efficacy and environmental risks. This study assesses a low‐concentration microbial antagonist (i.e., Bacillus amyloliquefaciens inoculums, BAI) intermittently injected into the systems to mitigate biofilm formation in three types of drip emitters using two kinds of treated RW. The results indicated that the application of BAI significantly (p < .05) mitigated the microbial biomass within biofilms when compared with the control groups (no‐BAI). In addition, BAI reduced the contents of extracellular polysaccharides and proteins of biofilms, which decreased the total biomass in BAI treatments by 44.9%–73.8%. Consequently, BAI effectively improved the emitter performances and increased the discharge variation rate by 31.9%–44.3%. These findings might provide a new perspective to control biofouling when applying RW in irrigation systems, with potential implications for sustainable water management in agricultural production.

中文翻译：

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淀粉芽孢杆菌应用来防止再生水微灌系统中的生物膜*

在滴灌系统中使用再生水（RW）可以解决淡水资源有限的挑战。使用RW时，灌溉系统中生物膜的生长是不可避免的问题。迄今为止，强力化学杀菌剂在控制生物膜方面主要在商业市场上占主导地位。但是，最近，科学家一直担心它们的实际功效和环境风险。这项研究评估了一种间歇性注入系统的低浓度微生物拮抗剂（即淀粉芽孢杆菌，BAI），以减轻使用两种处理后的RW在三种类型的滴灌喷头中生物膜的形成。结果表明，BAI的应用显着（p<.05）与对照组相比（no-BAI）减轻了生物膜中的微生物生物量。此外，BAI减少了细胞外多糖和生物膜蛋白的含量，这使BAI处理中的总生物量减少了44.9％–73.8％。因此，BAI有效地改善了发射极性能，并使放电变化率提高了31.9％–44.3％。这些发现可能为在灌溉系统中应用RW时提供控制生物结垢的新视角，对农业生产中的可持续水资源管理具有潜在的影响。