ABSTRACT
Food safety is a global issue and a goal. Since agricultural crops, raw materials, and foodstuffs are unceasingly prone to contamination by various pathogens and toxins, fast and accurate methods are required along the food chain for the detection and monitoring of contaminants. Today, great importance is paid to "nanosized" biosensors, called nanobiosensors", which may have a huge impact on quality control, food safety, and traceability. Thereby, the newest multidisciplinary approaches involve nano-inspired sensing/biosensing devices, amenable to miniaturized instruments with rapid response and minimal sample preparation. The latest advances in transducer technology at the micro/nanoscale corroborated with the integration of nano-biorecognition materials have resulted in more powerful tools for multiplex analysis and nanotracking systems able to fulfill the rapid monitoring and control need of the food chain. Electrochemical biosensors have superior properties over other existing measurement systems, because they can provide rapid, simple, and low-cost on-field detection.
