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There are yearly applied large quantities of animal waste onto agricultural land. It is important to minimize both the survival and spread of pathogenic and antibiotic-resistant bacteria in order to protect crop, surface water and groundwater. The complex interaction between horizontal gene transfer and transport processes through the soil will be described in the present project in controlled laboratory experiments by testing the effect of the slurries dry matter content and the soils initial soil water content. We expect an increased horizontal gene transfer in treatments with high dry matter content as a result of increased levels of nutrient. In addition, high water content is expected to increase horizontal gene transfer as a result of a continuous water film in the soil.
Leaching of pathogenic bacteria and antibiotic-resistant bacteria is tested in soil columns, where the effect of the slurry dry matter and the initial soil water content is tested. We expect that slurry with low dry matter will increase leaching of fecal bacteria as slurry particles will prevent matrix infiltration. Currently, there is some uncertainty regarding the importance of the soil water content and the leaching of bacteria - we expect that the importance is not as profound as it is generally concluded. Leaching data will finally be modelled by COMSOL.
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