Exploring the role of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) in ensuring dairy quality and safety: recent progress and future prospects

Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) has emerged as a powerful analytical technique for ensuring the safety and quality of dairy products by enabling rapid, sensitive, and nondestructive detection of contaminants, pathogens, and adulterants. This review surveys SERS applications in detecting veterinary and pesticide residues, heavy metals, mycotoxins, and microbial pathogens. This review examines the main advantages of SERS and the challenges associated with substrate reproducibility and matrix effects on sensitivity, especially in complex dairy matrices such as milk, cheese, and yogurt. Recent advances in matrix design are discussed, including the development of low-cost and reproducible nanomaterials and the integration of SERS with microfluidics, Machine Learning (ML) and fluorescence. Additionally, the review addresses the need for standardized protocols (SOPs) and cost reduction strategies to facilitate the widespread industrial adoption of SERS. Finally, the paper examines ongoing research aimed at overcoming current technical challenges and optimizing data interpretation, positioning SERS as a transformative tool for real-time, on-site monitoring of dairy product safety and quality. The future outlook for SERS in dairy quality control is promising, with significant potential for integration into emerging technologies, thereby supporting more efficient and transparent food safety practices across the dairy industry.