Effects and Removal of the Antibiotic Sulfadiazine by Eichhornia crassipes: Potential Use for Phytoremediation

The antibiotic sulfadiazine (SDZ) is a challenging threat to the health of aquatic organisms, as it frequently occurs in aquatic ecosystems. Tolerance mechanisms and accumulation of SDZ in a floating macrophyte (Eichhornia crassipes) under hydroponic conditions were investigated in this study to provide more insight into the SDZ removal process. Results show that the presence of 1 mg L^-1 SDZ decreased the quickest and ranged from 669.45 to 165.34 μg L^-1 from days 5 to 25. Exposing E. crassipes to SDZ ( < 1 mg L^-1) maintained stable leaf photosynthetic efficiency. The overall increase in superoxide dismutase and peroxidase activities with SDZ treatments indicated that leaves were resistant. SDZ was absorbed by E. crassipes, following the sequence of root > aerial parts under all treatments. These findings suggest that E. crassipes has the ability to phytoremediation SDZ contaminated water.