Smart packaging: sensors for monitoring of food quality and safety

Abstract

The development of chemical sensors and biosensors over several decades has been investigated resulting in novel and very interesting sensor devices with great promise for many areas of applications including food technology. The incorporation of such sensors into the food packaging technology has resulted what we call smart or intelligent packaging. These are truly integrated and interdisciplinary systems that invoke expertise from the fields of chemistry, biochemistry, physics and electronics as well as food science and technology. Smart packaging utilises chemical sensor or biosensor to monitor the quality & safety of food from the producers to the costumers. This technology can result in a variety of sensor designs that are suitable for monitoring of food quality and safety, such as freshness, pathogens, leakage, carbon dioxide, oxygen, pH, time or temperature. Thus, this technology is needed as on-line quality control and safety in term of consumers, authorities and food producers, and has great potential in the development of new sensing systems integrated in the food packaging, which are beyond the existing conventional technologies, like control of weight, volume, colour and appearance.