The Antibiotic Resistance Genes Contamination of Strawberries With the Long-Term Use of Raw, Aerobic Composting, and Anaerobic Composting Livestock Manure: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Strawberry fruits are easily contaminated with antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the soil fertilized with livestock manure, which is widely used by farmers in order to increased yield and fruit quality. Composting can reduce the ARGs contamination in livestock manure. However, there is a knowledge gap in understanding and comparing the ARGs contamination of strawberries with the long-term use of raw, aerobic composting, and anaerobic composting livestock manure. In this study, our results suggested that compared with the long-term use of raw livestock manure, both aerobic and anaerobic composting livestock manure reduced the ARGs diversity and abundance of strawberries. Mobile genetic elements (MGEs) closely determined the ARGs dissemination. The correlation analysis between ARGs and MGEs revealed the ARGs dissemination from fruits to human was attenuated when strawberries were fertilized with long-term use of composting livestock manure. In addition, this study illustrated the correlations between the antibiotic resistome and microbiome via network co-occurrence analysis, finding that the phylum Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Myxococcota were identified as the potential ARGs hosts which exerted the vital role in the environmental behavior of ARGs. The most important highlight was that the contamination of ARGs of strawberries was alleviated by the long-term use of composting livestock manure, especially the anaerobiotic composting manure.

Field ponding water exacerbates the dissemination of manure-derived antibiotic resistance genes from paddy soil to surrounding waterbodies

“…Compared with VGT, the risk of HGT is higher because of its ability to transfer ARGs between different bacterial species (Gogarten and Townsend, 2005;Partridge et al, 2018;Abe et al, 2020;Lu et al, 2020;Li et al, 2022). The process of HGT is regulated by various of MGEs, including plasmids, transposons, and integrons (Zhu et al, 2013;Forsberg et al, 2014;Guo et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2022). In this study, two manure-derived MGEs tnp 01 and 02, were detected in both paddy soil and field ponding water.…”

“…In recent years, the contamination of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) caused by misuse and overuse of antibiotics in healthcare and animal husbandry has attracted worldwide concern (Martínez, 2008;Zhu et al, 2013;Rodriguez-Mozaz et al, 2015;Zhang et al, 2022). Livestock manure is a hotspot that harbors abundant ARGs under selective pressure of antibiotics (Zhu Zhang et al 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1135278 Frontiers in Microbiology 02 frontiersin.org Jia et al, 2017;Congilosi and Aga, 2021;Macedo et al, 2022).…”

“…Of these, the well-known one is that "organic fertilizers partially replace chemical fertilizers" (Jiao et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2021b). Consequently, amounts of livestock manure or manure-derived amendments as organic fertilizer have been poured into farmland, but the contamination of antibiotics and ARGs in farmland has become increasingly severe, attracting increasing attention (Ding et al, 2019;Pu et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2022). Farmlands fertilized with manure or manure-derived amendments have become important sources of ARG contamination in other environments (Zheng et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2021b).…”

“…Farmlands fertilized with manure or manure-derived amendments have become important sources of ARG contamination in other environments (Zheng et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2021b). ARGs can be transferred from soil to vegetables and fruits, posing a direct threat to human health (Marti et al, 2013;Zhu et al, 2017;Mei et al, 2021;Zhang et al, 2022). The emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance kill approximately 4.95 million people worldwide annually (Ding et al, 2022).…”