Recently, the unconventional water resources safe utilization team of the Institute of farmland irrigation, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences used macrogenomic technology to study the long-term irrigated soil with reclaimed water. It was found that the planting mode rather than reclaimed water irrigation itself had a significant impact on the diffusion of antibiotic resistance genes. Relevant research results are published in the Journal of hazardous materials.
Antibiotic resistance genes (args) widely exist in reclaimed water. Therefore, whether the use of reclaimed water irrigation will affect the spread of args in soil has attracted much attention. The existing studies often lack strict control, most of them do not consider the impact on crops, lack of long-term test data demonstration, and the conclusions are inconsistent. In view of this, the team used metagenomic technology to study the effects of reclaimed water irrigation and planting patterns on args in two greenhouse soils with 16 years of reclaimed water irrigation history and different planting patterns. The results showed that various irrigation treatments (groundwater irrigation, reclaimed water irrigation and alternative groundwater reclaimed water irrigation) had no significant effect on the composition of soil args, while planting patterns significantly affected args, heavy metal resistance genes, biocide resistance genes, insertion sequences and microbial community composition. The results provide a theoretical basis for the safe utilization of reclaimed water.
The research was supported by the scientific and technological innovation project of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the scientific and technological breakthrough project of Henan Province, the China UK cooperation project and other projects.
(Science and technology daily)
