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A comparison of antibiotics, antibiotic resistance genes, and bacterial community in broiler and layer manure following composting

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Abstract

Animal manure is an important source of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the environment. However, the difference of antibiotic residues and ARG profiles in layer and broiler manure as well as their compost remains unexplored. In this study, we investigated the profiles of twelve antibiotics, seventeen ARGs, and class 1 integrase gene (intI1) in layer and broiler manure, and the corresponding compost at large-scale. Compared with layer manure, broiler manure exhibited approximately six times more residual tetracyclines, especially chlortetracycline. The relative abundances of qnrS and ermA genes in broiler manure were significantly higher than those in layer manure. The concentration of tetracyclines not only had a significantly positive correlation with tetracycline resistance genes (tetA and tetC) but was also positively correlated with quinolone resistance (qepA, qnrB, and qnrS) and macrolide resistance (ermA and ermT). Most ARGs in manure were reduced after composting. However, the relative abundance of sulfonamide resistance gene sul1 increased up to 2.41% after composting, which was significantly higher than that of broiler (0.41%) and layer (0.62%) manure. The associated bacterial community was characterized by high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The relative abundances of thermophilic bacteria had significant positive correlations with the abundance of sul1 in compost. The composting has a significant impact on the ARG-associated gut microbes in poultry manure. Variation partitioning analysis indicated that the change of bacterial community compositions and antibiotics contributed partially to the shift in ARG profiles. The results indicate that at industry-scale production broiler manure had more antibiotics and ARGs than layer manure did, and composting decreased most ARG abundances in poultry manure except for sulfonamide resistance genes.

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The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant numbers: 2017YFD0801402, 2016YFD0800205), the Special Program for Creative Ability Foundation of BAAFS (grant number KJCX20180407), the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (grant number: 6182009, 8182021), and the Beijing Agriculture Innovation Consortium (grant number BAIC04-2020).

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Tianlei Qiu: conceptualization, methodology, data curation, formal analysis, writing—original draft; Dan Wu: investigation; Lixin Zhang: software, writing—review and editing; Dexun Zou: supervision; Yanmei Sun: formal analysis; Min Gao: validation; Xuming Wang: funding acquisition, project administration, writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Xuming Wang.

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Qiu, T., Wu, D., Zhang, L. et al. A comparison of antibiotics, antibiotic resistance genes, and bacterial community in broiler and layer manure following composting. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 14707–14719 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11469-6

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