Acta Agriculturae Zhejiangensis ›› 2025, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (3): 621-632.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1004-1524.20231348

• Environmental Science • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Characteristics of bacteria community and antibiotic resistance genes in piggery wastewater and surrounding water environment

ZHAO Jiahao1,2(), XU Xing2, ZHOU Weidong2,*(), YANG Hua3, ZHAO Xihong1, WANG Wen3,*()   

  1. 1. School of Environmental Ecology and Bioengineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430205, China
    2. Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary, Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou 310021, China
    3. Institute of Agro-Product Safety and Nutrition, Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou 310021, China
  • Received:2023-11-29 Online:2025-03-25 Published:2025-04-02

Abstract:

The piggery wastewater might be an important reservoir of pathogenic bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the environment. In the present study, the characteristics of water quality, bacteria community and ARGs in swine wastewater and surrounding water environment were explored. Samples were gathered from the effluent from biochemical treatment of piggery wastewater, the irrigation ditch near the farm boundary, the storage tank of underground water, and the pond in pig farm, and were marked as MW, IW, UW, PW, respectively, for short. Then, a series of water quality parameters were analyzed, and 16S rRNA sequencing and real-time quantitative PCR was used to research the bacteria community and the abundance of ARGs in each sample, respectively. Results indicated that the chemical oxygen demand, ammonia nitrogen content and total phosphorus content were significantly (P<0.05) higher in MW than the others, as well as its absolute abundance of detected ARGs. The UW had the best water quality and the fewest bacterial diversity and richness among the four samples. The pathogens, i.e. Acinetobacter, Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1 and Pseudomonas, were detected in these four samples, and the major ARGs were tetracycline (tetQ and tetW) and macrolide (ermB) in MW and IW. Moreover, the correlation analysis revealed that the bacteria in the piggery wastewater were the primary hosts of ARGs, of which the relative abundance presented positive correlations with the absolute abundance of the most detected ARGs. Overall, the high water pollution indices, pathogen diversity, and ARGs abundance in MW might threaten the surrounding water environment of pig farm, thus essential emission on standard and further disinfection procedures should be implemented for piggery wastewater treatment.

Key words: piggery wastewater, bacterial community, antibiotic resistance genes, water quality parameter, water environment

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