Polymer-Based Biosensors in Food Industry

Dear Colleagues,

Monitoring of safety and nutritional quality of food is crucial in the food industry because the negligence of spoiled food may lead to numerous economic losses and harm to the health of customers. Most of the microbiological methods are expensive, tedious, and demanding. Recently, biosensors have been rapidly developed as a promising alternative to the conventional techniques for monitoring the safety and nutritional quality of food. Among various biosensors, polymer-based biosensors, including enzyme-, DNA-, aptamer-, and protein-based biosensors have gained increasing attention due to their high performances and abundant sources. Typically, a variety of polymer-related materials, such as polymer composites, biopolymers, conducting polymers, polymer beads, polymeric nanoparticles, and hybrids, have been employed to design and fabricate biosensors for the food industry, and various detection methodologies have been developed for polymer-based biosensors, including electrochemical, optical, colorimetric, immunoassay, etc. Though biosensors based on these conventional polymers showed great potential in food industry, novel polymers-based biosensors with better performance are still in high demand. Apart from high sensitivity, polymers-based biosensors with the following features will be preferable in food industry: (1) biocompatibility; (2) biodegradability; (3) can be integrated into the food packing materials; (4) capable of detecting various biomarkers simultaneously; and (5) low cost.

This Special Issue invites original papers and reviews reporting on recent progress in the following areas:

• Fabrication methods of polymers-based biosensors for food safety and food quality control;
• Biosensors based on novel polymeric materials and their application in the food industry;
• Novel polymer-based biosensors with excellent performance in the food industry;
• Integration process of polymer-based biosensors into food packing materials and their real-time monitoring of food quality;
• Next-generation polymer-based biosensors for the food industry.

Dr. Da Huang
Guest Editor

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