Antibiotic resistance in agricultural soils: Source, fate, mechanism and attenuation strategy

Abstract

Antibiotic resistance in agricultural soils is a significant environmental and health challenge worldwide. To minimize the risk of antibiotic resistance, it is important to understand the fate and spread mechanism of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), and develop effective technologies to minimize their negative effects. In this work, we reviewed recent studies on the occurrence of antibiotic resistance in soil by different agricultural practices. The continuous land applications of manures and sewage sludge, and irrigation with wastewater contribute to the elevated antibiotic resistance in soil. The fate of antibiotic resistance from different interfaces are also discussed. In particular, the mechanisms of ARGs dissemination between bacteria are presented. Aerobic composting, and anaerobic and aerobic digestions of manure, sludge, or wastewater are found to be effective treatments to reduce antibiotic resistance into agricultural soils from the sources. Furthermore, strategies to alleviate antibiotic resistance in soil are proposed, and research directions on in-depth mechanisms are outlined to elucidate the antibiotic resistance decay in soil treatment processes. Although much progress has been made in understanding the links of antibiotic resistance between soil and human health, there are still many unknowns on the complex interactions between them.

Graphical abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Agricultural soil
• antibiotic resistance
• soil remediation

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China for the National Science and Technology Major Project (Grant no. 2016YFD0201203), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 41671320), the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (Grant no. JQ201711 and no. ZR2016JL029), the Special Funds of Taishan Scholar of Shandong Province, and USDA Hatch Program (MAS 00549). Jinhua Wang thanks the CSC for supporting her study at UMass Amherst, and Baoshan Xing acknowledges the UMass Amherst Conti Faculty Fellowship.