12 - Applications of smartphones in food analysis

Abstract

The continuous increase of consumer demand for high quality food products and the close relationship between food safety and human health has kept the food industry in constant growth and development. Traditional detection technologies for food quality and safety evaluation are usually restricted, due to high costs, lengthy time demands, bulky instruments and the need for trained personnel. Therefore, rapid and accurate analysis of food products has drawn considerable attention in the past decade. A new generation of sensor-based techniques offers significant advantages over traditional methods in terms of speed, control, low cost, ease-of-operation, and data management, requiring minimal equipment and user involvement. The coupling of novel sensing technologies with smartphones enables the development of powerful lab-on-smartphone platforms with several applications in food analysis including detection of food adulteration, contaminants, toxins, pathogens and allergens, among others. Fusion of smartphones with different kinds of sensitive and selective biosensors provided the development of portable and user-friendly analytical devices, with the potential to provide a low-cost and effective solution for food quality and safety authentication. In this chapter, an overview of recent developments on smartphone-based methodologies for portable evaluation of food quality and safety is presented. The discussion focuses on detection methods and selected applications in food science, including challenges and future perspectives for the use of smartphone-based biosensors in food analysis. The studies developed up to date indicate that smartphones will provide a new era in food analysis, in which individuals without any expertise may be able to test their own food in the supermarket or at home.