Prevalence of Multi-Drug-Resistant bacterial strains in agricultural soils of Haryana, India

Abstract

Due to continuous misuse or overuse of antibiotics for various purposes in farm animals, the present century has witnessed a rapid increase in the prevalence of multi-drug-resistant bacterial strains specifically in the soil ecosystems throughout the world. In view of this significant fact, the present study was designed to assess the prevalence and spread of antibiotic-resistant-bacteria in agricultural soils of Haryana State in India. For this, a total of 135 bacteria were isolated from the soils of organic and conventional farms spread throughout the State. All the isolates were tested for antibiotic resistance. It was observed that 53.33%, 2.96%, 17.77% and 16.29% of the total isolates were resistant to penicillin, tetracycline, streptomycin and erythromycin respectively. A total of 13 isolates exhibiting resistance to either four or any three antibiotics up to a concentration of 25µg/ml were considered as multi-drug-resistant. Further, 16S rRNA sequences were obtained. The distance matrix and the phylogenetic tree of the selected thirteen sequences was constructed. From the results, it was observed that multi-drug-resistant strains were obtained predominantly from the agricultural soils taken from organic farms while majority of isolates from conventional agricultural farm soils represented resistance against either a single, or up to two antibiotics.