Onsite Quality Controls for Food Safety Based on Miniaturized Biosensing

Health and wellness are linked to the food we regularly consume. Although the emergence of advanced technologies, such as intelligent packaging, safety, and transportation in temperature-controlled containers, has greatly improved the quality of food, certain microbial invasions and deliberate adulterations are unavoidable when it involves long transportation and extensive commercialization. These activities eventually make the food unhealthy to consume. Onsite quality control (QC) tends to check such food items not only to control the food spoilage in commercialization but also to protect the consumers from the consumption of unhealthy food. In this context, advances in miniaturized sensing devices have paved numerous possibilities to monitor food quality in an onsite context. This chapter discusses the existing ways of ensuring quality assurances for food safety and their associated challenges. Thereby, common indicators of quality and spoilage in different types of food items have comprehensively been described as control of the different types of food. Thereafter, the miniaturized biosensor-based devices for food quality assurance have been described, where a brief discussion on the development processes, analytical performances, and commercial potentials are discussed with various examples and reported potential products for food quality assurance and safety.