From chemical lethality to biointelligence: An overview of priming and systemic regulation of plant extracts

Common approaches to plant disease management in recent decades have been based mainly on chemical control and direct pathogen control; an approach that, although showing promising results in laboratory conditions, has often been associated with yield instability, resistance development, and environmental hazards at the field scale. In the meantime, plant extracts as biocompatible alternatives have gained attention due to their ability to simultaneously regulate pathogen physiology and host defense systems rather than their direct antimicrobial potency.This review article, moving beyond the paradigm of short-term cellular inhibition, redefines the role of plant extracts in the form of “biointelligence”; a concept in which defense priming, intervention timing, and systemic regulation of responses are at the center of sustainable control strategies. Evidence shows that many polymolecular compounds of plant extracts, especially polyphenols and glycosylated flavonoids, are able to regulate the expression of key resistance genes, ROS balance, and SA, JA, and ET-dependent signaling pathways in a context-dependent manner without imposing severe stress In this context, the present article emphasizes the necessity of moving from absolute standardization based on chemical composition to functional standardization based on reproducible biological outcomes. Ultimately, it is argued that the success of plant extracts in sustainable agriculture lies not in increasing the dose or inhibitory potency, but in aligning the intervention with the disease dynamics, the plant growth stage, and the regulatory capacity of the biological system; a shift that could open new horizons for designing smart and low-risk strategies for plant disease management

کلیدواژه ها:

Plant immunity ، Induced systemic resistance (ISR) ، Defense priming ، Sustainable crop protection ، Jasmonate–ethylene pathways