Chapter 12 - Graphene-Based Nanosensors and Smart Food Packaging Systems for Food Safety and Quality Monitoring

Abstract

Consumption of food is one of the basic needs for human beings and its quality and safety is essential for leading a healthy life. Owing to the ever-increasing globalization of markets, foods being processed, distributed, and consumed in the same locality where they are produced are becoming less common. This worldwide integration of the food supply chain requires new approaches and systems for assuring food safety and quality since, during harvesting, handling, processing, and storage, food quality is compromised due to various biotic and abiotic factors. Therefore, it is important to monitor routinely the quality and safety of foods at different points in the supply chain. During the past decade or so, biosensors have been developed for detecting the presence of various deleterious analytes in foods. The sensitivity of biosensors has been significantly increased through the use of nanomaterials. Graphene-based nanomaterials have many unique and extraordinary properties, which make them ideally suitable for use in biosensors and other devices and techniques used in food quality analysis. These properties include high conductivity, mechanical flexibility, amenability for versatile surface functionalization, ultrahigh surface area, biocompatibility, and so on. We have summarized the recent advances in detecting pesticides (e.g., organophosphate, carbamate, methyl parathion, paraoxon, carbofuran, chlorpyrifos, toxins, etc.) by electrochemical methods and optical methods using graphene-based nanomaterials. We have also discussed the importance of smart food packing systems such as active and intelligent packaging [time-temperature indicators (TTI), integrity indicators (InI), freshness indicators (FI), and radio frequency identification (RFID)], which are significantly contributing to the safety and quality of the food. In addition, current challenges of graphene-based nanosensors and smart packaging nanosensors were discussed.