Development of Novel Aptasensing Techniques for Detection of Mycotoxins and Antibiotic Residues in Food and Beverages

Abstract

Dietary habits of people throughout the world are different depending upon the availability, ethnicity, cultural influences, preparation and preferences for food. Apart from beneficial constituents, food products also contain contaminants that are toxic in nature and can cause infection and severe illness. The excessive contamination in food, dairy and agriculture lead to pollution of the food products, which ultimately enters the food chain and reaches into the human and animal bodies. Thus, access to the high quality and safe food is a basic need in our community. Defining human exposure to various contaminants like mycotoxins and antimicrobial (antibiotics) is an enormous task. The quality and nutritional value of food products are on high risk due to increased consumption and accumulation of toxic chemicals and fungal toxins. The main classes of food contaminants that pose the serious problems are mycotoxins (ochratoxins and aflatoxins) and antimicrobial (aminoglycosides and tetracyclines). While these contaminants are associated with many adverse health effects, there is a lack of their continuous and on-line monitoring. Conventional techniques are effective for analysis of food contaminants but not capable of providing high-throughput and sensitive detection especially in unprocessed (untreated) food products (milk) and beverages (alcoholic beverages). Hence, for continuous screening, quantitation and facilitating the early alarming systems for contaminated food and beverages samples, biosensor has emerged out as choice of analytical methods providing rapid, highly specific, selective, reliable and cost effective analysis (Chapter 1). newlineSince the outbreaks of mycotoxin contamination (ochratoxins and aflatoxins) in milk and alcoholic beverages (beer and wine), the analysis of these fungal toxins in food and beverages has become primary interest of researchers. Meanwhile, the residual presence of antibiotics in food and food products has also been reported. Contamination of milk and beverages is hazardous and c