Speaker
Description
Antibiotics are indispensable in the treatment of infectious diseases in humans and are extensively applied in veterinary practice, animal husbandry, and aquaculture worldwide. Their growing discharge into aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, however, raises concerns about adverse effects on native microbial communities. Within this context, agricultural soils remain an insufficiently explored pathway of environmental contamination, as residues originating from partially unmetabolised pharmaceuticals can be introduced into cropland through manure, digestate, treated sewage sludge, and reclaimed irrigation water.
In the Hungary-Serbia border region, where organic fertilizers and irrigation are important inputs to crop production, the contribution of these practices to antibiotic loads in soils, their potential uptake by plants and the associated risk of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) development has not been systematically assessed. This work, developed in the framework of cross-border cooperation established through the Interreg IPA Hungary-Serbia (HU-SRB) Programme and aligned with the proposed PLANTSAFER project, aims to generate a shared evidence-base on antibiotic occurrence in agricultural soils and to support risk-informed management of the soil-plant continuum within a One Health approach. An advanced LC-HRMS-based workflow designed for multi-residue determination, combining optimized extraction and clean-up of soil samples with targeted and suspect screening analysis, is used for determination of selected antibiotics in soil samples from the Vojvodina Province (Serbia). The results are compared with relevant literature data. This preliminary work provides a basis for the next project phase, which will integrate chemical, microbiological and molecular biological tools to assess antibiotic transfer, AMR risk, pollution reduction options, and biodiversity protection measures in the HU-SRB border area.