Effects of Ten Antibiotics on Seed Germination and

Authors: Derek G Hillis James Fletcher Keith R Solomon Paul K Sibley

Publish Date: 2010/11/24

Volume: 60, Issue: 2, Pages: 220-232

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Abstract

We applied a screeninglevel phytotoxicity assay to evaluate the effects of 10 antibiotics at concentrations ranging from 1 to 10000 μg/L on germination and early plant growth using three plant species lettuce Lactuca sativa alfalfa Medicago sativa and carrot Daucus carota The range of phytotoxicity of the antibiotics was large with EC25s ranging from 39 μg/L to 10000 μg/L Chlortetracycline levofloxacin and sulfamethoxazole were the most phytotoxic antibiotics D carota was the most sensitive plant species often by an order of magnitude or more followed by L sativa and then M sativa Plant germination was insensitive to the antibiotics with no significant decreases up to the highest treatment concentration of 10000 μg/L Compared with shoot and total length measurements root elongation was consistently the most sensitive end point Overall there were few instances where measured soil concentrations if available in the publicly accessible literature would be expected to exceed the effect concentrations of the antibiotics evaluated in this study The use of screening assays as part of a tiered approach for evaluating environmental impacts of antibiotics can provide insight into relative species sensitivity and serve as a basis by which to screen the potential for toxic effects of novel compounds to plantsThe authors thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for funding and Christina Desrochers Leilan Baxter Manuel Villatoro Jason Kerr Jacqueline Ho and Mohammad Ali for laboratory assistance The authors also like to thank the reviewers for their contributions to this manuscript

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