Abstract
This review summarises miniaturised technologies, commercially available devices, and device applications for food authentication or measurement of features that could potentially be used for authentication. We first focus on the handheld technologies and their generic characteristics: (1) technology types available, (2) their design and mode of operation, and (3) data handling and output systems. Subsequently, applications are reviewed according to commodity type for products of animal and plant origin. The 150 applications of commercial, handheld devices involve a large variety of technologies, such as various types of spectroscopy, imaging, and sensor arrays. The majority of applications, ~60%, aim at food products of plant origin. The technologies are not specifically aimed at certain commodities or product features, and no single technology can be applied for authentication of all commodities. Nevertheless, many useful applications have been developed for many food commodities. However, the use of these applications in practice is still in its infancy. This is largely because for each single application, new spectral databases need to be built and maintained. Therefore, apart from developing applications, a focus on sharing and re-use of data and calibration transfers is pivotal to remove this bottleneck and to increase the implementation of these technologies in practice.
Highlights
Over the years, technologies have advanced rapidly and enabled more precise, more efficient, and faster checks of foods for integrity issues to ensure the quality, safety, and authenticity of foods in supply chains
In contrary to the aforementioned spectrometers, Raman devices collect the spectrum of vibrations upon the interaction of a monochromatic laser light with the sample, and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) detects the light that emits during the cooling process of plasma produced by the absorption of a laser pulse (Table 1)
Several prototypes have been described in literature for food fraud testing, e.g., Raman imaging for milk powder authentication [47] or apple contamination [48], short-wave infrared HSI on nut quality [49], or hyperspectral imaging for contamination detection [50,51,52]
Summary
Technologies have advanced rapidly and enabled more precise, more efficient, and faster checks of foods for integrity issues to ensure the quality, safety, and authenticity of foods in supply chains. Miniaturisation of technologies has allowed more and more use of analytical devices outside laboratory environments [8,9] This includes noninvasive [10] and handheld, portable devices, some of which are coupled to or even integrated into smartphones [11]. Methodologies/applications focusing on meat [12,13], dairy products [14], and honey [15] as well as plant foodstuffs [16] have been reviewed These reviews include primarily evaluations of prototypes with a proof-of-concept approach, which are not (yet) operable on a large scale in practice.
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