Abstract
China is the world's largest livestock and poultry breeding country, but also the largest use of veterinary antibiotics. When a large amount of chicken manure is applied to the soil, it will cause the number of antibiotic residues and resistant bacteria to increase, which will bring about the pollution of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the soil, and then increase the risk of environmental pollution and human health. Field experiments were conducted to study the changes of soil tetracycline antibiotic residues, resistant bacteria and resistance genes treated with different types and dosage of chicken manure (no chicken manure, (CK), low fresh chicken manure treatment (300 kg·667 m−2), high fresh chicken manure treatment (600 kg·667 m−2), low decomposed chicken manure treatment (300 kg·667 m−2) and high decomposed chicken manure treatment (600 kg·667 m−2)). After one-year application of chicken manure, content of soil organic matter increased by 1.0%-3.2% compared with the control. The activity of soil catalase significantly increased by 84.3–91.5%, 81.9–102.9% in fresh and decomposed chicken manure treatments compared with the control, respectively. The amount of soil resistant bacteria under the same treatment was in the order of Anti-OTC > Anti-TC > Anti-CTC. After one-year application of chicken manure, the total tetracycline amount in the soil was increased by 168.5–217.9% compared with the control. The amount of antibiotic residue in soil treated with fresh chicken manure was 3.0–9.1% higher than that treated with decomposed chicken manure. The abundance of ARGs in the soil was in the order of that treated with high fresh chicken manure > low fresh chicken manure > high decomposed chicken manure > low decomposed chicken manure. The risk of tetracycline antibiotics to soil ecological environment may be greatly reduced after chicken manure decomposed.
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Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to the reviewers of this manuscript; their insight was instrumental to improving this paper. Finally, we also thank Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People's Republic of China for the financial support necessary to make all of this work possible.
Funding
This study was funded by Fund of China Agriculture Research System (CARS-23) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFD0201200).
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LSX and WHX conceived the study. WZW collected the data presented in the manuscript. LSX and WZW performed statistical analyses. All authors contributed to the writing and revision of the final manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The sampling of soil and vegetable did not require permission, and the species are not classified as endangered and are not under any protection in any of the sampled areas.
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Xu, L., Wang, W. & Xu, W. Effects of tetracycline antibiotics in chicken manure on soil microbes and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Environ Geochem Health 44, 273–284 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-021-01004-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-021-01004-y