Recently, researchers from Agro-Environmental Protection Institute, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs revealed the role and mechanism of earthworms in alleviating the migration of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) from soil to vegetables. The findings are published in the journal of “Science of the total environment”.

With the extensive use of livestock manure in agricultural soils, antibiotics and ARGs also enter into soil along with it.

In this study, the effects of two ecological earthworms (endogeic  Metaphire guillelmi  and epigeic  Eisenia fetida ) on the accumulation and transfer of chlortetracycline (CTC) and ARGs in a soil–lettuce system were studied via pot experiments. After addition of earthworm, the content of CTC in the lettuce root and leaf decreased by 8.93%-36.1% and 24.4%-44.1%, respectively. Both earthworms significantly reduced the CTC uptake by lettuce roots from the soil (P < 0.05) but did not change the CTC transfer efficiency from the roots to leaves. The relative abundance of ARGs in the lettuce root and leaf decreased by 25.1-44.1% and 24.4-25.4% with the application of earthworms. In addition, the addition of earthworms reduced the abundance of some pathogenic bacteria in the system. Overall, the findings imply that earthworm application can substantially reduce the accumulation and transmission risk of antibiotics and ARGs in soil–lettuce systems, providing an economical and effective bioremediation method for addressing soil antibiotic and ARGs contamination.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the National Key Research and Development Program of China.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163907

Contact: zhaolixia@caas.cn