Engineered bacteriophages as programmable biocontrol agents

[Display omitted] •Engineered bacteriophages are promising tools for use in food biotechnology.•Diverse natural bacteriophages can be leveraged by engineering for specificity and infectivity.•Engineered bacteriophages are potent tools for pathogen biocontrol.•Engineered bacteriophages can be used for targeted delivery vectors and pathogen detection. Bacteriophages (or ‘phages’) can be potent biocontrol agents but their potential has not been fully realized due to inherent limitations of natural phages. By leveraging new tools in synthetic biology, natural phages can be engineered to overcome these limitations to markedly improve their efficacy and programmability. Engineered phages can be used for targeted detection and removal of pathogens, in situ microbiome editing, gene delivery and programmable control of phage-bacterial interactions. In this mini review we examine different ways natural phages can be engineered as effective biocontrol agents through a design-build-test-learn platform and identify novel applications of engineered phages in food biotechnology.