Impact on degradation of antibiotics from poultry litter using Autothermal Thermophilic Aerobic Digestion (ATAD)

Tetracycline (TC) is one of the common antibiotics which is widely used in livestock growth promotion. The prevalent application TC may pave way to progression of antibiotic resistant bacteria. The main objective of this study is to determine the effect of Autothermal Thermophilic Aerobic Digestion (ATAD) on the fate of TC residues found in digested poultry litter. For the determination of TC in poultry litter, thin layer chromatography (TLC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) were done. TLC result revealed that the R_f value of standard TC on TLC plate was 0.97 which correlates with the R_f value of TC at 0, 12, 24 and 36 h of digested poultry litter sample and not at 48, 60 and 72 h. HPLC chromatogram revealed that the limits of detection and the recovery were 5 µg/kg and 96% for standard TC. Linear correlation curves were obtained over the series of 100-500 µg/mL with correlation coefficient of 0.996 and the calibration curve was Y = 0.001X + 0.066. These results confirmed the degradation of TC in ATAD digestion of poultry litter by abiotic processes.