Electrochemical (Bio)Sensors as Promising Analytical Tools in the Analysis of Soils, Plants and Environmental Monitoring

Dear Colleagues,

Biosensors hold great promise for the task of environmental monitoring and control. The specific interaction of an immobilised biological layer with target pollutants provides the basis for analytical devices for laboratory or field use. While environmental applications of biocatalytic (enzyme) and immunosensors have greatly increased during the 1990s, little attention has been given to the development of recognition layers for environmental surveillance. Such recognition layers could play a major role in future environmental analysis.

The modification of a transducer surface, through the immobilisation of a recognition layer, can thus form the basis for new sensing devices and provide solutions to various environmental problems. One of the potentially major applications of electrochemical (bio)sensors is the testing of water, food, soil, and plant samples for the presence of pathogenic microorganisms and analytes (carcinogens, drugs, mutagenic pollutants, etc.).

Electrochemical (bio)sensors are in line with the requirements of in situ screening measurements since all the equipment needed for the (bio)sensor electrochemical analysis could be portable. Moreover, a  (bio)sensor could be a very useful test, integrated in a panel of tests, since it can provide rapid and easy-to-evaluate information on the presence of compounds with an affinity with bioelements. This test is one of the most competitive in terms of analysis cost and time, with the possibility of developing a very end-user-friendly format, according to the requirements of a screening test for in-field measurements.

Soil sample analysis is an ideal application for electrochemical (bio)sensors as the in situ determination of many parameters, such as metal ions, is often needed to quickly and accurately assess pollution or soil fertility. However, the main advantage of biosensors is that they can simultaneously determine several metal ions and, in many cases, also perform the chemical speciation of these ions. The quantification of metal ions in soil extracts can be performed in a wide pH range, providing the potential to measure accurately, rapidly, and at a low cost the total and available metal concentrations, as well as individual metal fractions such as water-soluble, exchangeable, or adsorbed metal concentrations in Mn and Fe oxides or soil organic matter. A further advantage of biosensors is that they enable the quantitative determination of a wide range of concentrations without requiring many successive dilutions, as is typical of spectroscopic techniques.

Moreover, just as in soils, in plants, it is possible to determine, apart from mineral ions, several organic substances that are the main parameters controlling their physiological function, such as amino acids, hormones, and vitamins.

We, therefore, consider that, in soil and plant extracts, in analyses performed in the laboratory, as well as in physical soil and plant samples in cultivated areas, biosensors will constitute valuable analytical chemistry tools, thus reducing the time and greatly facilitating the identification of numerous significant compounds and chemical elements.

Prof. Dr. Stella Girousi
Prof. Dr. Evangelia Golia
Guest Editors

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