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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Environmental Microbial & Food Safety Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #325093
Title: Microbial properties database editor tutorial

Author
item GENE, WHELEN - Us Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
item MARIROSA, MOLINA - Us Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
item ZEPP, RICHARD - Us Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
item PELTON, MITCHELL - Batelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories
item RAVENSCROFT, JOHN - Us Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
item Pachepsky, Yakov

Submitted to: Environmental Protection Agency Special Publication
Publication Type: Government Publication
Publication Acceptance Date: 9/1/2016
Publication Date: 3/1/2017
Citation: Gene, W., Marirosa, M., Zepp, R., Pelton, M., Ravenscroft, J., Pachepsky, Y.A. 2017. Microbial properties database editor tutorial. Environmental Protection Agency Special Publication. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Athens, GA USA.

Interpretive Summary: Knowing rates of growth, die-off, and release of pathogen and indicator microorganisms is critical for environmental assessments and forecasts. There is an extensive knowledge base regarding these rates, but the information is scattered across the world literature such that it is often difficult to locate. There is a pressing need in collecting, assessing, and making readily available this information to address regulations and develop guidance on water use for recreation, irrigation, seafood production, technological processes, and other activities. We developed the MDPE software that facilitates supplying microbial properties to users and can be utilized in predictive microbiology and risk assessment to provide necessary model inputs. Results of this work are expected to be widely used by the various groups of professionals addressing implementation of regulations regarding microbial water quality.

Technical Abstract: A Microbial Properties Database Editor (MPDBE) has been developed to help consolidate microbialrelevant data to populate a microbial database and support a database editor by which an authorized user can modify physico-microbial properties related to microbial indicators and pathogens. Physical properties describe changes in state of the physical system and relate to properties such as mass of a microbe, excretion density of microbes in animal feces, revalence, etc. Microbial properties relate to changes in or with the microbe, such as inactivation rate, attachment/detachment rates, dose-response coefficients, etc. The objective of the MPDBE is to provide a tool by which an authorized user can modify physico-microbial properties related to microbial indicators and pathogens and populate metadata standards, so the properties are available for consumption by microbial source, fate, transport, and risk models. Although other databases are being developed on specific microbial properties, such as inactivation of microorganisms in environmental media, or explicitly include other valuable support information (e.g., methods of analysis, experimental set up, etc.), this database helps bridge the gap between modeling, monitoring, and methods by identifying parameters that are typically used by models engaged in Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessments (QMRAs). These parameters address modeling paradigms that include release mechanism from manure forms (e.g., solid pats, slurry, and dry litter); fate and transport through various environmental media (e.g., overland, groundwater, surface water); exposure; intake; and risk. Some parameters may be widely used (e.g., inactivation rats), while others may seem obscure but only because users may not be familiar with the specific models or the literature associated with them. As additional parameters are correlated to more models, these can be added to the database to ensure a smooth linkage between data collected in the field and at the benchscale with models that consume the information. Once populated, the database can act as a reference to help parameterize models used in QMRAs. In addition, for models registered to ntegrated environmental modeling infrastructures, the database editor could be used to automatically populate model input requirements. The microbial database is to supply microbial properties to users. Included with the microbial database will be an editor that lets users update microbial and parameter values in the database. The parameters for evaluation of impacts due to pathogen exposure can be viewed, estimated, modified, printed, deleted, and exported.