In the post-Covid era, ensuring food security is of paramount importance. It is essential to properly clean vegetables and fruits before consumption, and this has been highlighted several times over the past two years. Recently, World Food Safety Day was observed by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 7th June to emphasize the importance of eating healthy, safe and chemical free food and thus, help prevent foodborne diseases as well. . And now, technological innovation aims to address food safety concerns, especially for fresh produce. Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have invented a tiny sensor that could be useful in detecting pesticides on fruits.
The researchers published their findings in the academic journal Advanced Science. Nano-sensors are still in the early stages but could help detect food pesticides before consumption. the idea of invention is to enable local store and supermarkets to detect harmful chemicals on the produce they sell before they have a harmful effect on human health. These nano-sensors use a 1970 discovery called surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), which has been used in many fields besides food. They use flame-spraying technology to deposit nanoparticles on the surface of the glass, thus promoting chemical signals and helping to identify the presence of pesticides within minutes.
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Pesticides can be extremely harmful to human health.
Lead researcher Georgios Sotirio, from Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, says, “Reports show that half of all fruits sold in the European Union contain pesticide residues that are linked to human health problems in large quantities. ” and the corresponding author of the study.
“Our sensor “It can detect pesticide residues on the surfaces of apples in as little as five minutes without destroying the fruit,” said Hapeng Li, a postdoctoral researcher in Sotirio’s lab and first author of the study. “Although they need to be validated in larger studies, we offer a proof-of-concept practical application for large-scale food safety testing before consumption,” he said.