Using Sterols to Detect Pig Slurry Contribution to Soil Organic Matter

Abstract

Samples of pig slurry, as well as dairy and poultry manures collected in Brittany (western France) were analysed to test the ability of sterol profiles to provide a fingerprint of pig slurry contribution to soil organic matter. The data show that the 5β-stanol, known as coprostanol, is the most abundant sterol present in pig slurry, whereas this compound occurs only in minor amounts in both poultry and dairy manures. Moreover, systematic variations of (campesterol + sitosterol)/cholesterol (i.e., C 28+29

Assessment of Fecal Contamination in Oklahoma Water Systems through the Use of Sterol Fingerprints

“…Cholesterol is one of the vital components in the cell membranes of vertebrate organisms and some marine algae species [17,18]. It is also found, to a lesser extent, in some vascular plants [19].…”

Preservation of an ancient grassland biomarker signature in a forest soil from the French Massif Central

“…Accordingly, different steroid ratios have been proposed to assess faecal pollution (e.g. Jardé et al, 2007;Tyagi et al, 2008). The faecal marker contribution to Aydat soils was estimated from the following ratio (Lavrieux, 2011):…”

Use of Enterococcus, BST and Sterols for Poultry Pollution Source Tracking in Surface and Groundwater

“…Although there are numerous studies using sterol ratios for tracking human fecal contamination, few studies have used these ratios for differentiating sources of fecal contamination. Sterol ratio criteria for differentiating sources of fecal contamination are derived mostly from studies of agricultural environment manures and slurries matrices (Jardé et al, 2007;Standley et al, 2000), with the later study showing that ratios #8 and #9 successfully discriminated pig slurry from poultry and dairy manure. These two ratios were also successful in this study.…”