Abstract
The survival, persistence, and dispersal of bacteria in soil raises serious water quality questions for rural areas of the world especially where podzol-type soils dominate. To determine survival characteristics of an environmentally derived multiple-antibiotic resistant E. coli, it was added to laboratory containers containing sandy-loam podzol soils taken from two different locations (‘Webb’, pH 6.8–8.3 and ‘Rich’, pH 5.5–7.2). This was done in order to study the stability of the tracer bacterium under conditions designed to mimic those that might be encountered during subsequent field mini-plot studies. Sets of microcosms consisting of three replicates of each soil received 1012 or 1013 colony forming units per g of soil and were incubated at four temperatures (5, 10, 20, and 37 °C) and two moisture levels (15% i.e. average field capacity and saturation) for 160 days. The microcosm data gave estimated maximum survical times for the ‘Webb’ soil of 23.3 months at 5 °C under saturating moisture conditions and 20.7 months for the ‘Rich’ soil under the same conditions using exponential regression analysis of the data.
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Sjogren, R.E. Prolonged survival of an environmental Escherchia coli in laboratory soil microcosms. Water Air Soil Pollut 75, 389–403 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00482948
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00482948