ABSTRACT
The increase in consumption of high-quality products associated with the demands from society for more environmentally friendly production practices results in the necessity of continuous improvement of beforeand post-harvest quality detection methods. Current analytical practices
11.1 Introduction ........................................................................................... 313 11.2 Biosensor Components......................................................................... 315
11.2.1 Biosensor Recognition Elements ............................................ 315 11.2.2 Immobilization Procedures ......................................................316 11.2.3 Transducers ................................................................................ 319
11.3 Use of Biosensors as Analytical Tools for Fruit and Vegetable Processing .................................................................... 322
11.4 Conclusions ............................................................................................ 333 Abbreviations ................................................................................................. 333 References ........................................................................................................ 334
in the food industry are time consuming and require skilled labor. These analytical techniques require time-consuming separation, expensive instrumentation, and the use of chemicals with high purity. Most of these drawbacks can be overcome by applying enzymatic analysis (Newman et al., 1998; Prodromidis and Karayannis et al., 2002). In this sense, biosensors have been used for many years to provide process control data in food processing due to the characteristics of the produced devices to be of small size, accurate, and economically viable emerging technology for rapid diagnostics sector applied to agricultural products (Hall, 2002).
