Progressive development in biosensors for detection of dichlorvos pesticide: A review

Dichlorvos is an organophosphate pesticide widely used in agriculture and industry for controlling insect pests. Indiscriminate and widespread use of this pesticide may result in impending toxicity to environment and human health. Dichlorvos has been banned in some countries and marked as a restricted pesticide in several other countries including India. The current review presents a chronological abridgement of dichlorvos pesticide as well as the research performed in the last three decades on biosensors for the detection and monitoring of dichlorvos, particularly in food, environment and agriculture. This review describes the progressive development of biosensors to detect dichlorvos pesticide from the use of conventional immobilizing supports to more advanced hybrid/composite nanomaterials. Furthermore, we summarize the development of biosensors by enzyme inhibition methods, wherein the enzymes acetylcholinesterase (AChE), tyrosinase etc., are immobilized on the transducer either by traditional immobilization methods or employing advanced nanomaterials for better integration.