An effective bioremediation approach for enhanced microbial degradation of the veterinary antibiotic sulfamethazine in an agricultural soil

Background: The veterinary antibiotic Sulfamethazine (SMZ) contaminates soils via manure applications. Like other soil contaminants (herbicides, fungicides, and nematicides), it has to be degraded. The main challenge is that SMZ biodegradation with bacteria is impeded, since SMZ is a bacteriostatic antibiotic, designed to block microbes in their growth. Results: In this study, we enriched the indigenous soil microbial community (including the single strain Microbacterium sp. C448, adapted to SMZ degradation) from a Canadian soil and we present a suitable approach, for soil remediation by inoculating a German soil with this microbial community established on carrier particles, at environmentally relevant concentrations of 1 mg kg−¹. When compared with the isolated SMZ-degrading strain (also obtained from Canada), the microbial community outperformed the mineralization rates of the isolated strain in soil. The negligible soil native SMZ mineralization was successfully increased to 44 and 57 % within 46 days, by the microbial community. The sustainability of this increased SMZ mineralization capacity was proven by the rapid mineralization of a second application of¹⁴C-SMZ 112 days after the first. Conclusions: The pronounced SMZ mineralization and the high amount of non-extractable¹⁴C-residues (NER) in the inoculated soil indicate that the NER are mainly of biogenic origin (metabolically fixed¹⁴C). Therefore, the applied inoculation approach decreased the risk of persistent non-extractable SMZ residues. Together with our former studies, this specific soil inoculation approach was tested for three substances with different physico-chemical properties, indicating that this soil bioremediation technique might also be used for other substances.