ABSTRACT

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Due to the permanent risk of food crises, with several serious occurrences in the last years, the

consumer’s attention is directed toward improved food quality and safety. Where food safety

is concerned with the presence of harmful components like toxins and chemicals (PCBs,

dioxins, etc.), food quality is determined by sensory properties like taste, aroma, texture,

and appearance, and more recently functionality. The determination of many of these quality

attributes often requires sophisticated analytical techniques like liquid chromatography and

gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Routine quality measurements on food products,

which are hampered by such traditional analytical techniques, are often too costly and time-

consuming to be included. An alternative is provided by biosensors (Figure 26.1). Biosensors

are a subgroup of chemical sensors where the detection of a chemical component is based on a

specific interaction of this chemical component with a bio-recognition molecule-being an

enzyme, antibody, aptamer, microorganism or even a whole cell. This biological sensing

element is integrated with or in intimate contact with a physicochemical transducer [1,2].

A wide range of transducers are available to detect the interaction between the analyte and

the bio-recognition molecule and convert it into an electronic signal. Electrochemical,

optical, thermal, and mass sensitive transduction mechanisms have been used in biosensor

development over the past decade.