Glyphosate has a negligible impact on bacterial diversity and dynamics during composting.

Abstract

The herbicide glyphosate has several potential entry points into composting sites and its impact on composting processes has not yet been evaluated. To assess its impact on bacterial diversity and abundance as well as on community composition and dynamics, we conducted a mesocosm experiment at the Montreal Botanical Garden. Glyphosate had no effect on physicochemical property evolution during composting, while it was completely dissipated by the end of the experiment. Sampling at Days 0, 2, 28 and 112 of the process followed by 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing also found no effect of glyphosate on species richness and community composition. Differential abundance analyses revealed an increase of a few taxa in the presence of glyphosate, namely TRA3-20 (order Polyangiales), Pedosphaeraceae and BIrii41 (order Burkholderiales) after 28 days. In addition, five amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) had lower relative abundance in the glyphosate treatment compared to the control on Day 2, namely Comamonadaceae, Pseudomonas sp., Streptomyces sp., Thermoclostridium sp. and Actinomadura keratinilytica, while two ASVs were less abundant on Day 112, namely Pedomicrobium sp. and Pseudorhodoplanes sp. Most differences in abundance were measured between the different sampling points within each treatment. These results present glyphosate as a poor determinant of species recruitment during composting.