PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Biotechnology
Agrochemical innovation for crop health: moving forward through dynamic disorder
Provisionally accepted
- University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
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Global climate change has huge negative impacts on crop health. Strategies for increasing crop yield and resistance to biotic and abiotic stress factors (pathogenic microbes, insect pests, drought and heat waves, flooding etc.) are important to achieve sustainable agriculture for food security. Breeding for elite crop varieties takes time and may face challenges in commercialization. Besides the development of genetic tools to generate climate-smart crops, recent innovations in agrochemicals as interventions for improving crop health are emerging. This article discusses the current advances in three small technologies, RNAs, peptides and nanotechnology, in targeting plant diseases and improving productivity as well as in future research directions for agrochemical innovation. Although previously assumed as undruggable in human diseases, protein disorder has unique conformational features and plays critical roles in regulating various biological processes controlling crop productivity and stress resistance in planta. The article proposes the potential incorporation of protein disorder in these three approaches and intelligent agrochemical innovation with tailored functionalities.
Keywords: Agrochemical, RNA Interference, antimicrobial peptides, Nanotechnology, Intrinsically disordered proteins/regions, biomolecular condensates, sustainable agriculture
Received: 06 Oct 2025; Accepted: 17 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hsiao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: An-Shan Hsiao
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.