ABSTRACT
Nanosensors are the sensors built with at least one material in nanoscale level or the sensors used to detect components of a material in nanoscale level. The advancements in nanoscience and nanotechnology are leading to rapid improvements in the design and fabrication of nanosensors and also are widening the applications of nanosensors in various industrial sectors including the food industry. Nanosensors have the major advantage of sensing some components present in nanolevel in a complex food matrix quickly with high accuracy and simple operational procedure. Most of the common analytical techniques used in food industry to detect minor or major components of food matrix, like liquid chromatography (LC), gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy (GCMS), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and immunosensing techniques like enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), have some disadvantages, such as needing trained, qualified personnel and requiring a long analysis time or destruction of the sample. Some of the advance techniques like spectroscopy and hyperspectral imaging are either expensive or complex operationally. Nanosensors overcome these obstacles, and some of the recently developed nanosensors can be directly used in production line for identifying chemical components and for detecting foodborne pathogens (Augustin and Sanguansri 2009; Avella et al. 2011; Baeumner 2004; Bernardes et al. 2014; Gomes et al. 2015; Ramachandraiah et al. 2015). These sensors help to improve the productivity of the food industry by eliminating time wasted for laboratory analytical tests, and they also improve product quality since most of these nanosensors can detect components present in low level in the material, which cannot be detected by the common analytical tests.
