Engineered Biocatalytic Strategies for Pesticide Degradation in Food Systems: From Catalytic Performance to Practical Applications

Pesticide residues remain a persistent challenge for food safety under realistic processing and storage conditions. Enzymatic degradation has emerged as a promising food-compatible strategy because of its high selectivity and mild operating conditions. However, practical applications are hindered by limited catalytic efficiency, insufficient stability and reusability, scalability constraints, and regulatory uncertainty. This review presents an application-oriented overview of recent advances in enzymatic pesticide degradation, with emphasis on engineering strategies to enhance performance and robustness. Progress in natural enzymes, nanozymes, and multienzyme or hybrid cascade systems is discussed alongside emerging approaches based on artificial intelligence-assisted design and synthetic biology. In addition, key barriers to translating laboratory systems into real food matrices are critically analyzed. Finally, representative applications in postharvest washing, active packaging, and integrated sensing-degradation platforms are highlighted.