Several members from the team will be presenting at the conference. Dr. Pruden will be giving a talk as an overview of the research findings to date; Dr. Partha Ray will present a poster on the excretion of antibiotics; Lauren Wind will present on the field study; and Giselle Guron, Carmen Wickware, and Emily Garner will be presenting on the composting study. Chrissy Teets and Ellen Russell will be attending. Additionally, our team will be having an informal dinner with several of our advisory board members, who will be attending the conference: Ed Topp, Jean McLain, Lisa Durso, and Heather Allen.
Leigh-Anne Krometis receives honor
Leigh-Anne Krometis receives the AW Farrall Young Educator Award from the American Society for Agricultural and Biological Engineers.
International Association for Food Protection
Several member of our team presented at the IAFP 2017 Annual Meeting held in Tampa, FL: Vaishali Dharmarha presented “Storage Temperature and Sanitizer Washing Influences the Bacterial Community Dynamics of Carrots” and “An Assessment of Produce Growers’ Sanitizer Practices and Knowledge about Antimicrobial Resistance”; Kendall Fogler presented “Microbial Community Analysis of Field Grown Produce in Soil Amended with Manure or Compost from Antibiotic Treated Cattle”; and Giselle Guron 
presented “Metagenomic Analysis of Antibiotic Resistance Genes and Mobile Genetic Elements Found on Radish Taproots Grown in Soils Amended with Manure and Compost from Cattle” and “Quantifying Sulfonamide Resistance Genes on Lettuce Grown in Soil Amended with Manure and Compost from Antibiotic-Treated Cattle”.
NIFA Food Safety Project Directors Meeting
NIFA held the annual project directors’ meeting at the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP). Dr. Pruden attended the meeting in Tampa, FL, and presented a talk that provided an overview about our research and extension efforts.
Amy Pruden receives honor
Amy Pruden receives the Virginia Tech Graduate School’s 2017 Faculty Outstanding Mentor Award https://vtnews.vt.edu/
American Ecological Engineering Society Meeting
Two of our graduate students presented results from our field study at the conference held in Athens, GA. Lauren Wind presented “Persistence of culturable antibiotic resistant fecal coliforms from manure-amended vegetable fields”, and Kyle Jacobs presented “Indicator bacteria, sediment, and antibiotic-resistance gene transport via runoff from vegetable plots amended with manure”.
Lauren Wind successfully defended her thesis
Lauren Wind successfully defended her thesis work entitled, “Persistence of Culturable Antibiotic Resistant Fecal Coliforms from Manure-Amended Vegetable Fields”. This thesis explores the effects of crop (lettuce, radish) and fertilizer type (inorganic, compost, raw manure) on the incidence and persistence of antibiotic-resistant fecal coliforms, a common family of fecal indicator bacteria used to track the environmental spread of antibiotic resistance.
Team Meeting
Project team monthly meeting in which the team is discussing research results shared by Christine Pankow.
Publication: Fate of Land Applied Emerging Organic Contaminants in Waste Materials
Congratulations to Chaoqi Chen on the acceptance of a review article entitled, “Fate of Land Applied Emerging Organic Contaminants in Waste Materials”, for publication in the Current Pollution Reports (link to article).
Robert Williams successfully defended his thesis
Robert Williams successfully defended his thesis work entitled, “Effect of Composting on the Prevalence of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria and Resistance Genes in Cattle Manure”. This thesis explores the effect of composting on the levels of ARGs and numbers of bacteria capable of growing on media containing antibiotics. Beef and dairy manure from cattle were studied and it was found that the composting process itself had a stronger influence than whether they had previously been administered antibiotics.