IMPACT OF VETERINARY THERAPEUTIC AGENTS ON GROWTH AND BIOCHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF ERUCA SATIVA PLANT [ 19 ]

Steroid hormones (H) and tetracycline antibiotics (T) are considered two important classes of veterinary therapeutic agents administrated to livestock for different purposes that have been detected for many environmental matrices in wide concentrations range. The effect of progesterone (Pro), androstenedione (4-AD), androstadienedione (1,4-AD) and tetracycline antibiotics namely oxytetracycline (OTC), chlortetracycline (CTC) and tetracycline (TC) on arugula plants (Eruca sativa) growth and biochemical composition was investigated. Compost and potassium permanganate were applied to minimizing the negative effect of veterinary therapeutic agents on plant. A pot experiment was conducted at the greenhouse of Agricultural Research Center (ARC) at Giza Governorate, Egypt. Soil fortified with 2 mg kg -1 of H and T target compounds individually and combined was used to study their effect on chlorophyll, proline, catalase (CAT), and peroxidase (POD) activities as antioxidant enzyme and plant growth. Under this experiment conditions; the obtained results showed that veterinary therapeutic agents caused increased the content of proline, however chlorophyll content was increased as a result of H application and decreased with T application. Both CAT and POD activities were increased, especially with the combined mixture application. Potassium permanganate or compost can be used for remediation procedures in veterinary therapeutic agents contaminated soils. INTRODUCTION Steroid hormones (H) and antibiotics (T) are considered two important classes of veterinary therapeutic agents administrated to livestock for many purposes that have been detected for many environmental matrices in wide range of concentrations. Various plants have been found to uptake and accumulate these compounds. Lorenzen et al (2004) noticed that broiler litter contained approximately 55 and 30 mg kg -1 of estradiol and testosterone respectively, and breeder litter contained approximately 70, and 23 to 30 mg kg -1 of both respectively. While androstenedione (4-AD) and progesterone (Pro) concentrations in fresh manure were below detection limit; surprisingly their concentrations in the surface soil reached 60 ng g -1 (Mansell et al 2011). Zheng et al 2007 noticed an increase in progesterone concentrations when dairy manure was aged, with concentrations increasing from below detection limits to about 200 ng g -1 over two weeks. Kumar et al (2005a) found that the levels of antibiotics in animal manures ranged from trace levels up to 200 mg kg -1 . Administration of antibiotics via oral or intramuscular injection into the animals cannot be absorbed completely; therefore most of them which excreted with urine and feces as prototype or metabolites were calculated about 40 90% of the dose admitted. For example, the amount of chlortetracycline (CTC) at the treatment pool of pig’s manure could be up to 1 mg kg -1 (Campagnolo et al 2002), whereas the amount of TC in liquid organic fertilizer could reach to 20 mg.kg -1 (Hamscher et al 2002). Thus, when utilizing manures as organic fertilizers containing untreated antibiotics to agri-