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Updated: Oct 8, 2025

Biocontained Carcass Composting for Control of Infectious Disease Outbreak in Livestock
Published on: May 6, 2010
Effect of biochar addition on the dynamics of antibiotic resistant bacteria during the pig manure composting
Mukesh Kumar Awasthi1, Hong Liu1, Tao Liu1
1College of Natural Resources and Environment, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi Province 712100, China.
Abstract:
In present study, the taxonomic variation of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) in pig manure (PM) composting with coconut shell biochar (CSB) and bamboo biochar (BB) addition was investigated. The experiment was divided into three treatments: T1 (as control or without biochar amendment), T2 was added 10% coconut shell biochar and T3 supplemented with 10% bamboo biochar. The initial feed stock were properly homogenized using a mechanical crusher. PM and wheat straw (WS) were mixed in a 5: 1 dry weight ratio to adjust the initial carbon/nitrogen ratio 25:1, bulk density to ~0.5 (kg/L) and ~60% moisture content, respectively. This experiment was lasted for 42 days. The results indicated the bacterial communities in the three treatments were more different in terms of relative abundance and diversity of dominant bacteria. The control group had the highest abundance of Kingdome bacteria. The changes in ARB was noticed by variation in the relative abundances of Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes and Bacteroidota. At the end of composting (on day 42), the total RAs of ARB at the class, order, and family levels were considerably reduced in T2 and T3 by ~35.78-38.75%, 36.42-40.63% and 45.82-47.70%, respectively. But in T1 was decreased by 6.16-8.62%, 7.93-8.72% and 8.70-10.15%, as compared with the day 0 sample. However, the CSB was much more effective to reduce 55 to 60% of ARB than T3 or BB applied treatment has 40 to 42% ARB reduction, while control has certainly very less RAa of ARB reduction. Finally, the biochar amendment was significant approach to mitigate the total ARB abundance in compost and it's further used for organic farming purposes.
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