Sorption and Transport of Antibiotics in Manured Upland Agricultural Soils

Sorption and transport are important environmental behaviors of antibiotics in soils and can determine the fate of antibiotics in environments；however，limited relevant studies have been conducted on long-term manured soils. In this study，batch and repacked soil column experiments were conducted to examine the sorption and transport behavior of four veterinary antibiotics，including sulfamethazine（SMT），florfenicol（FFC），doxycycline（DOX），and enrofloxacin（ENR），in red soils，yellow soils，and calcareous soils with long-term amendment of chicken or pig manure collected in Zhejiang Province. The results showed that the sorption isothermal data of the four target antibiotics all conformed well to the linear and Freundlich models. The performance of the linear model was better for the weakly-sorbing antibiotics（SMT and FFC），whereas the performance of the Freundlich model was better for the strongly-sorbing antibiotics（DOX and ENR）. The sorption of target antibiotics was governed by both soil and manure types. The linear sorption parameter（Kd）of SMT and FFC were positively related to the organic carbon content and pH of soils，and their sorption was mainly controlled by soil organic matter，indicating that non-electrostatic interactions（e. g.，hydrogen bonding，hydrophobic interactions）played dominant roles in their sorption to the soils. Contrastingly，DOX and ENR did not show significant relationships with soil pH，organic carbon content，and cation exchange capacity，indicating that multiple mechanisms（e.g.，hydrophobic interactions，hydrogen bonding，and electrostatic interactions）worked jointly in their sorption into the soils. SMT and FFC exhibited high recoveries of breakthrough curves（in ranges of 37.5%-92.3% and 45.8% -112.6%，respectively）in column transport experiments，reflecting their high leaching potentials. Contrastingly，no soil column breakthrough of DOX and ENR was observed，reflecting that the injected antibiotics were completely retained inside the soil columns. The maximum relative concentrations and breakthrough recoveries of SMT and FFC showed significant negative linear relationships with Kd. This indicates that the leaching potential of antibiotics can be predicted from sorption parameters using the regression equations established by batch and column experiments. © 2025 Science Press. All rights reserved.