12:23 p.m., Dec. 7, 2010----Sudarshan Dutta, a doctoral student in the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences at the University of Delaware, has been cited for his paper published in the Journal of Environmental Quality for research involving hormones in poultry litter.

THIS STORY

E-mail

Print

Twitter

Dutta's study was conducted on experimental plots receiving raw and pelletized poultry litter on the coastal plain agricultural soils in Middletown, Del., and from those plots he evaluated estrogen concentration in surface runoff.

Over a four-month period, Dutta performed sampling from 10 natural storms and, according to a Journal of Environmental Quality press release, “found that the amounts of estrogen were lower in plots fertilized with pelletized manure and plots that received no-tillage treatments.”

The release also says that Dutta found “the entire range of estrogen concentrations in the samples was significantly lower than those observed in other previous agricultural studies. Nevertheless, concentrations of the less toxic conjugate forms of estrogen were higher than the toxic, free forms.

According to Dutta, prior studies did not usually measure the conjugate forms of estrogen.

The study was partially funded through a grant by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the results are published in the September-October 2010 issue of the journal.

Co-authoring the article from the University of Delaware were Tom Sims, deputy dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the T.A. Baker Professor of Soil and Environmental Chemistry, and Shreeram Inamdar, associate professor of bioresources engineering and plant and soil sciences.

Article by Adam Thomas