Abstract
In recent years, natural alternatives have been sought for the control of beekeeping pathologies; in the case of American Foulbrood (AFB) disease, the use of synthetic antibiotics was prohibited due to honey contamination and the generation of resistant bacteria. The significant increase in population growth worldwide has led to great concern about the production of large amounts of waste, including those from agribusiness. Among the most important beverages consumed is coffee, generating thousands of tons of waste called spent coffee grounds (SCG). The SCG is a source of many bioactive compounds with known antimicrobial activity. The aims of the present work were: (1) to obtain and chemically analyse by HPLC of SCG extracts (SCGE), (2) to analyse the antimicrobial activity of SCGE against vegetative form of Paenibacillus larvae (the causal agent of AFB), (3) to evaluate the toxicity in bees of SCGE and (4) to analyse the effect of the extracts on the expression of various genes of the immune system of bees. SCGs have a high content of phenolic compounds, and the caffeine concentration was of 0.3%. The MIC value obtained was 166.667 µg/mL; the extract was not toxic to bees, and interestingly, overexpression of abaecin and hymenoptaecin peptides was observed. Thus, SCGE represents a promising alternative for application in the control of American Foulbrood and as a possible dietary supplement to strengthen the immune system of honeybees. Therefore, the concept of circular bio-economy could be applied from the coffee industry to the beekeeping industry.
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All datasets used and/or analyzed during this study are included in this article and are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Carlos Méndez and Cesar Pegoraro for their technical assistance in the HPLC analysis. We also thank Javiera Norambuena Ph.D., for their critical review of the manuscript.
Funding
This research was funded by Project of Investigation IDEA - CIC /2020 and Project REDES 180154 of bilateral collaboration Chile-Argentina (Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo de Chile (ANID)). The authors would like to thank Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas (CIC), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), for financial support.
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PG: designed, planned, and conducted experiments; analysed data; and wrote the original draft. FZ performed quantitative real-time PCR and laboratory honey bee experiments for gene expression analysis. SM conducted experiments and review the manuscript. SF conceived the project, secured funding, and review the manuscript. JM conceived the project, designed the study and experiments, analysed data, secured funding, reviewed, and edited the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the publishing version of the manuscript.
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No approval of research ethics committees was required to accomplish the goals of this study because experimental work was conducted with an unregulated invertebrate species.
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Giménez-Martínez, P., Zúñiga, F., Medici, S. et al. Spent coffee grounds extract: antimicrobial activity against Paenibacillus larvae and its effect on the expression of antimicrobial peptides in Apis mellifera. Vet Res Commun 48, 889–899 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11259-023-10256-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11259-023-10256-1