Biotechnological Strategies for the Sustainable and Environmentally Compatible Utilization of Animal-Derived Antimicrobial Peptides in Plant Protection

Increasing restrictions on chemical pesticides in plant protection—including the rapid evolution of resistance, ecological degradation, and mounting regulatory pressures—have paved the way for a re-evaluation of the role of animal-derived antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as novel biotechnological tools. Despite their high efficacy in animal immune systems, direct transfer of these peptides to agricultural settings has often been associated with inconsistent performance and variable outcomes, an issue commonly attributed to environmental instability and limited persistence of AMPs. This review demonstrates that these challenges stem less from inherent weaknesses of animal-derived peptides and more from conceptual errors in their design, targeting, and deployment logic within plant systems. By integrating molecular, physiological, ecological, and agronomic evidence, this review proposes a fundamental paradigm shift: moving away from viewing animal-derived antimicrobial peptides as stable, broad-spectrum killing agents toward understanding them as transient, context-dependent, and ecologically timed biological modulators. Within this framework, animal AMPs not only directly inhibit pathogens but also modulate plant immune responses, reorganize pathogen–microbiome interactions, and induce targeted disruption at critical stages of the disease cycle, thereby exerting a multi-level regulatory role. Experimental evidence indicates that pulsed, localized, or induced deployment of these peptides can reduce the severity of plant diseases by approximately ۵۰ to ۸۰%, while significantly limiting the risk of resistance selection, long-term soil microbiome disruption, and bioaccumulation. The article then focuses on biotechnological capacities to transform animal-derived AMPs into truly practical tools, including their integration into hybrid plant protection systems with biological control agents, exploitation of precise delivery technologies and biodegradable nanodelivery systems, and development of inducible expression platforms based on gene editing. These approaches hold particular strategic importance under climate change conditions, which are associated with the emergence of novel pathogens and unstable disease patterns. Economic analyses reveal that low-dose, targeted application of animal-derived peptides can reduce plant protection costs by ۳۰–۵۰%, especially in high-value-added crops, while remaining aligned with emerging regulatory requirements. Finally, this review presents a forward-looking roadmap for the intelligent deployment of animal-derived antimicrobial peptides, grounded in AI-based disease prediction, real-time sensors, transient delivery systems, and international regulatory convergence. Overall, the article demonstrates that by redesigning the logic of application, animal-derived antimicrobial peptides can be elevated from challenging laboratory molecules to key components of sustainable, low-input, and environmentally compatible plant protection systems

کلیدواژه ها:

Animal derived peptides ، Plant disease suppression ، Microbiome mediated protection ، Transient bioactive compounds ، Hybrid crop protection systems ، Climate adaptive agriculture ، Regulatory aligned biocontrol ، Intelligent deployment strategies