Tallinn University of Technology

About: Tallinn University of Technology is a education organization based out in Tallinn, Estonia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: European union & Oil shale. The organization has 3688 authors who have published 10313 publications receiving 145058 citations. The organization is also known as: Tallinn Technical University & Tallinna Tehnikaülikool.

Enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin uptake by plants from soil

Abstract: Very small amounts of pharmaceuticals present in everyday food may generate strains of resistant microorganisms in human and animal organisms. This study involves the uptake and accumulation of some widely used fluoroquinolones - enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin - by plants cultivated in soil augmented with drugs using the microbiological agar diffusion method. Bacillus subtilis was used as the test bacterium. The three plants chosen for the experiment were lettuce (Lactuca sativa), common barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.), which were cultivated in a laboratory in soils mixed with enro- or ciprofloxacin at nominal concentrations of 500, 200, 50 and 10 µg/g. The concentrations of fluoroquinolones remained unchanged in the soil during the experiment. The presence of enrofloxacin was detected in all plants grown at enrofloxacin concentrations of 500, 200 and 50 µg/g. The presence of ciprofloxacin was only detected in barley and cucumber grown in soil with a base concentration of 500 µg/g. In lettuce, which had a longer vegetation period, the presence of ciprofloxacin was detected at all concentrations. The content of ciprofloxacin in the lettuce was 44 µg/g at a soil concentration of 10 µg/g: fluoroquinolones accumulate in a plant during the vegetation period.