Size matters: Powder biochar promotes the elimination of antibiotics resistance genes and potential hosts during swine manure composting

Livestock manure faced acute environmental pollution and ecology risky caused by antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). This study investigated the effects of biochar particle size including powder biochar (75 μm, PB), and granular biochar (2 mm, GB) on ARGs variation during the aerobic composting. The results showed that the total relative abundance (RA) of the ARGs decreased significantly in all the treatments after composting. While compared to the removal efficiency of total RA in the control (CK), PB decreased by 90.99 % and GB increased by 93.25 %, and both PB and GB removed MGEs completely. Sulfonamide antibiotic resistance genes were the main contributor of the ARGs rebounding. PB addition could hinder the rebounding of sulfonamide antibiotic resistance genes during the later stage of the composting. Co-occurrence network analysis showed that the addition of biochar (both types) increased the complexity of the microbial community the competition of inter-phylum, which was indicated by the higher number of edge and density and lower positive connection. The different ARGs removal efficiency in these two treatments might be that PB promoted the competition both inter-phylum and potential hosts-other microbes, resulted in fewer kinds and abundance of ARGs hosts, while GB increased the stability of ARGs hosts making it more resistant to environment changes. Totally, compared with the global adjustment strategy of microbial communities, more exclusive methods focusing on the controlling of ARGs hosts should be explored to decrease the ecological risk of composting products during composting process.