Mitigating Risk Of Antimicrobial Resistance In Aquaponics By Capture And Electro-Catalytic Degradation Of Antibiotic Residues

Our overall goal is to develop innovative and cost-effective recirculating water treatment methods to capture and degrade antibiotic residues to innocuous compounds in recirculating aquaponic systems and evaluate their impact on reducing the incidence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in these systems. The overall hypothesis of the proposed integrated research is that the development and deployment of optimized recirculating water treatments would significantly reduce the prevalence of antibiotic residues in the water and its associated AMR phenotypes in the microbiome of both fish, plants, and the aquaponic environment, including biofilters. The specific objectives are: Objective 1. Develop a novel approach using a macroporous functionalized matrix to capture oxytetracycline residues from recirculation water in a settling tank and evaluate the efficiency of the approach in a lab-scale system;Objective 2. Engineer an E-Fenton approach using the functionalized matrix from Aim 1 to degrade the captured oxytetracycline residues in aquaponic systems and validate the effectiveness in a pilot scale unit;Objective 3. Evaluate the reduction in AMR incidence using the proposed water treatment systems for aquaponic systems;Objective 4. Develop educational and outreach programs to engage stakeholders to enhance the overall understanding of AMR risks and antibiotic residues, promote stewardship of antibiotic use, and provide hands-on learning for various approaches to removing antibiotic residues.