Innovative sensors for food quality monitoring with a non-destructive approach

Nowadays, sensors are becoming more and more important in life sciences. Both in biomedical fields where the need of a continuous monitoring of body parameters is a desired characteristic and in food industry, where checking the quality of the rough materials is now a fundamental requirement. Nevertheless, different environments require specific sensing techniques. Agri-food sensors are requested to control and certify food safety, quality and convenience; furthermore, as the agri-food processes are highly variable, the sensors require the capability to handle this variability. Sensor fundamental requirements are often the disposability of the sensing element, indeed risk of contamination between different samples are typical characteristics of food science sensors. They should be characterized by a fast and reliable response, for example in quality control tests. This PhD thesis dealt with the use and optimization "on field" of a sensor platform consisting of gas and liquid sensors for qualitative assessment of food by fingerprinting. This platform is named BIONOTE. Sensor responses have been validated by means of a multidisciplinary experimental procedure consisting on data correlation with specific biochemical parameters. The innovation given by this technology is represented the utilization of a non-destructive tool for on-line monitoring of food quality as an alternative rapid and accurate method for routine analysis. Thus the thesis want to introduce a new device able to perform real-time, sensitive and possibly label free detection of target analytes or foods by exploiting the different sensing properties given by the use of different transducers and a unique chemical interactive material, the anthocyanin. A brief introduction to the state of the art of the technologies used in food analysis is reported in the first Chapter. In Chapter 2 a description of the BIONOTE platform is given. Then, applications on filed of the BIONOTE potentiality are described and results are presented and discussed. Finally conclusions are drawn.