Research progress and hotspots of antibiotic resistance genes in livestock and poultry manure based on CiteSpace

Abstract:

Antibiotics have been widely used in animal husbandry since they were discovered in the 1940s, promoting the growth and health of domesticated animals. As most antibiotics are water-soluble, 30% to 90% of antibiotics are released into the environment in the form of parent compounds through urine or feces. Improper use of antibiotics will pose selective pressure on the environments and enhance the transmission of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the environment, thereby posing a potential risk to human health and ecosystems. Revealing the research hotspots, frontiers, and trends of ARGs in livestock and poultry manure in the last 20 years can provide important information for controlling the contamination of ARGs derived from livestock and poultry manure and shed new lights for the future research. We retrieved the articles published in the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) from 2002 to 2022 to analyze the research status and trends of ARGs in animal husbandry systems. CiteSpace was employed to visualize the keyword co-occurrence, keyword clustering, keyword bursts, number of publications, and collaboration of research institutions. A total of 896 valid publications were included in this study. The number of publications about ARGs in livestock and poultry manure in both China and the globe has been growing since 2011 and has accelerated significantly since 2014. The papers published in English were much more than those in Chinese. Additionally, China was the country with the largest number of publications and the Chinese Academy of Sciences was the institution with the largest number of publications. The research hotspots included the source and origin of ARGs, transmission of ARGs in the environment, the potential human exposure to ARGs, and the mechanisms for the mitigation of ARGs. The future research work can identify the underlying mechanisms by using advanced molecular methods including metagenomics, high-throughput qPCR array, and single-cell Raman spectroscopy. In addition, efforts should be made to promote the development of approaches for mitigating ARGs. This study visualized the main research progress in ARGs in livestock and poultry manure and put forward the future key research directions, providing new insights into the mitigation of ARGs.