Proceedings of the 2015 2nd International

Symposium on Physics and Technology of Sensors,

8-10th March, 2015, Pune, India INVITED TALK 16

IT16. Applications of Bio-sensors in Agri-food industry and mitigation of

bio-threat paradigm
Alok Shah* and OP Chauhan, *LSRB, DRDO, New Delhi, DFRL, Mysore

The agri-food market the world over has increased biological, chemical and physical threats
to food products, triggering a bigger consumer demand on process control, quality and safety
of these products. Bio-sensors can play a vital role in the agricultural and food sectors to
control production processes and ensure greater food quality and safety by reliable, fast and
cost effective monitoring procedures. Bio-sensors are promising alternatives to conventional
analytical tools since they offer advantages in size, cost, specificity, rapid response, precision
and sensitivity. Each step in the agricultural and food production chain is susceptible to
myriad threats in terms of loss of quality and transmission of diseases. These biological,
chemical and / or physical threats can emanate from environmental contamination or failures
during food handling, processing, packaging and distribution. Bio-sensors can detect, analyse
and quantify molecules of different biological origins and throw light on the quality of food
or agri-material in terms of their spiking with pesticides, fertilizers and dioxins residues, in
addition to providing information on contaminated water and soil residues, genetically
modified organisms, pathogenic microorganisms and their toxins, and food components such
as antinutrients, allergens, drugs, additives, and hydrocarbons. Biosensors are also useful for
the evaluation of food composition that undergo transformation during post-harvest
operations and processing. Biosensors enable real time monitoring of variables such as pH,
temperature, pressure, oxygen, flow and volatile substances. Biosensors can also play a useful
role in the implementation of hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) plans by
detection of food borne pathogens and chemical contaminants. Suitably developed and
designed biosensors can effectively screen air, water, soil, food, fresh and waste plant and
animal agro-material for mitigation of bio-threat paradigm also by rapid detection of
pathogenic microbes. Biosensors enable capturing of genetic signatures of various bio-
pathogens and their toxic metabolites, that can pose a potential threat to human health and
well being during outbreak of any unfortunate biological warfare (BW).

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