{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,21]],"date-time":"2026-09-21T17:47:36Z","timestamp":1790012856963,"version":"4.0.1"},"reference-count":51,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,3]],"date-time":"2025-09-03T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1756857600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Microbiol."],"abstract":"<jats:p>Environmental compartments, from soils and crop rhizospheres, to bio-reactors and municipal water networks have emerged as dynamic hot-spots for antimicrobial-resistance evolution and dissemination. Bacteriophages offer a precision, self-amplifying alternative to conventional biocides, yet their environmental deployment, intellectual-property space and commercial readiness remain only partially charted. Here, we critically synthesize the past decade of progress in phage-based interventions across three sectors: (i) soil remediation and crop-protection interfaces, where multi-phage cocktails suppress wilt- and blight-causing pathogens while preserving beneficial microbiota; (ii) biofuel and petro-energy infrastructures, in which lytic phages mitigate the microbiologically influenced corrosion and contaminated fermentations, restoring ethanol yields; and (iii) natural and engineered water systems, where phages show promise in treating recalcitrant biofilms, algal blooms and selectively ablate World Health Organization-priority pathogens. Meta-analysis of the World Intellectual Property Organization database reveals rapidly rising but geographically skewed patent activity, with China and the United States accounting for &amp;gt;61% of reviewed filings, and a gap between laboratory proof-of-concepts and marketed products. We identify bottlenecks, including lack of good manufacturing practice at scale, fragmented regulatory frameworks, and the evolutionary balance between single-phage precision and cocktail breadth. A roadmap is suggested that couples high-throughput phage discovery, synthetic tailoring and adaptive approval pathways. Together, these advances position environmental phage therapy to become a cornerstone of the One-Health response to increasing levels of microbial resistance.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fmicb.2025.1621103","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,3]],"date-time":"2025-09-03T14:14:19Z","timestamp":1756908859000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":15,"title":["Phage therapy for environmental biotechnology applications"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"16","author":[{"given":"Suniti","family":"Singh","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Rachel","family":"Samson","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Francis","family":"Hassard","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,3]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"204","DOI":"10.1089\/phage.2021.0016","article-title":"vHULK, a new tool for bacteriophage host prediction based on annotated genomic features and neural networks","volume":"3","author":"Amgarten","year":"2022","journal-title":"Phage"},{"key":"ref2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1624","DOI":"10.1039\/C8EW00316E","article-title":"Biofouling reduction in a MBR by the application of a lytic phage on a modified nanocomposite membrane","volume":"4","author":"Ayyaru","year":"2018","journal-title":"Environ. 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