Existence and survival of parasites in soil ecosystems irrigated with either conventional water or treated sewage effluent

In this work, two greenhouse and field experiments were conducted to value the existence and survival of the key soil parasites in two soil ecosystems irrigated either with conventional agricultural irrigation water or treated sewage effluents. The soil ecosystem irrigated with sewage effluent was bioremediated with six amendments including uncultivated control UC, cultivated control CC, soil inoculated with AM (T1), soil inoculated with a mixture of Thiobacillus thiooxidant and Thiobacillus ferrooxidant (T2), soil ecosystem treated with probentonite material (T3) and soil ecosystem treated with a combined mixture of all the aforementioned remediation amendments (T4), followed by phytoremediation with canola, Indian mustard or black nightshade hyper accumulator plants. Results indicated that the intensities of developed and undeveloped Ascaris sp . eggs, Entamoeba coli oocysts ( E. coli ) gradually disappeared from the polluted soil after being exposed to bioremediation followed by phytoremediation, yet both never entirely disappeared from the soil ecosystem irrigated with treated sewage effluent. Entamoeba histolytica cysts thoroughly disappeared from the polluted soil after being bioremediated with either sole or combined mixture of the remediation amendments and were not detected at both vegetative and maturity stages of the grown hyper accumulator plants. It can be concluded that the applied treatments showed high efficiency in controlling the presence of common pathogenic parasites (Ascaris, E. coli, and E. histolytica) in the soil ecosystem. The results indicate that the most successful treatments were T3 and T4 in eliminating E. histolytica and reducing the presence of Ascaris eggs and E. coli cysts in the tested soil ecosystem.