ABSTRACT
Food security and safety have been a major concern of researchers as the worldwide population is estimated to peak at 9.7 billion by 2050 from the current estimate of 7.7 billion. This might be linked to the fact that increase in population will naturally translate to corresponding increases in food demand. There are several factors that mitigates against full realization of food security and food safety, which includes pests and diseases, pesticide residues, contaminants, heavy metals, and incidence of food-related poisonings. It has been discovered that the conventional methods of detection of these contaminants and food relates pathogens and poisoning using modern analytical techniques such as different chromatographic techniques involves several shortcomings, such as costly reagents, time-consuming sample pretreatment and expensive equipment. There is a need to search for a sustainable technology such as biosensors due to several features, which include high efficiency, sensitivity, high thermal stability, and accuracy. Hence, this chapter provides detailed information on the use of biosensors for recognition of pathogens. The utilization of numerous types of biosensors such as optical, electrochemical and piezoelectric is also reviewed as well as their classification into immunosensors, aptasensors, genosensors, and enzymatic biosensors .
