Past, Present and Future of Sensors in Food Production

Abstract

Microbial contamination management is a crucial task in the food industry. Undesirable microbial spoilage in a modern food processing plant poses a risk to consumers’ health, causing severe economic losses to the manufacturers and retailers, contributing to wastage of food and a concern to the world’s food supply. The main goal of the quality management is to reduce the time interval between the filling and the detection of a microorganism before release, from several days, to minutes or, at most, hours. This would allow the food company to stop the production, limiting the damage to just a part of the entire batch, with considerable savings in terms of product value, thereby avoiding the utilization of raw materials, packaging and strongly reducing food waste. Sensor systems offer major advantages over current systems as they are versatile and affordable but need to be integrated in the existing processing systems as a process analytical control (PAT) tool. The desire for good selectivity, low cost, portable and usable at working sites, sufficiently rapid to be used at-line or on-line, and no sample preparation devices are required. The application of biosensors in the food industry still has to compete with the standard analytical techniques in terms of cost, performance and reliability.

Food engineering into the XXI century

“…Electronic noses and electronic tongues are an array of sensors used in food analysis to detect and discern chemical components in aromas and tastants, respectively . Fast‐response microbiological methods based on sensor technologies such as bioluminescence, flow cytometry and PCR are becoming available for food safety evaluation . These sensor systems offer major advantages over “sample and growth” microbiological methods but they need to be adapted and integrated into food processing lines and small scale operations.…”

Microbiological Biosensors Based on Luminescence

“…Doskonałym rozwiązaniem wydają się być biosensory, które powszechnie stosowane są w ochronie środowiska [1][2][3], medycynie [4][5][6] przemyśle spożywczym [7][8][9] lub przemyśle obronnym. W całej rodzinie biosensorów można wyróżnić mikrobiologiczne biosensory bazujące na zjawisku luminescencji, które ze względu na ich dobrą czułość, szybką reakcję na zanieczyszczenie oraz szerokie spektrum temperatury i zakres pH, w których mogą pracować, są coraz częściej stosowane.…”

Foodomics for investigations of food toxins

“…In the last decade rapid and sensitive screening methods for monitoring of food toxins were introduced: bioassays, molecular biology and/or immunological techniques, gel-clot technique, turbidimetric technique, biosensors and chromatographic as well as mass spectrometry-based methods [7,[22][23][24]. Bioassays are used when fast analysis of potentially contaminated food is required [25] and/or for assessment of cytotoxic action of food toxin in cell cultures.…”