Recent development and applications of emerging biosensing technologies and on-site analytical devices for food adulteration detection: a critical review

The increasing incidence of food adulteration poses a significant challenge to global health and food safety. Although current detection methods can effectively complete food adulteration detection, they usually require complex pre-preparation processes and professional technicians to some extent. Therefore, the development of rapid and on-site detection technologies for food adulteration is imperative. Recently, biosensing technologies and portable devices have been developed for efficient and precise food adulteration detection. In this review, the strengths and weaknesses of conventional food adulteration detection methods were compared. The recent development of emerging biosensing technologies (i.e., antibody-based biosensors, aptamer-based biosensors, molecular imprinted polymers (MIPs)-based biosensors, and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-associated proteins (CRISPR/Cas) systems-based biosensors) and portable analytical devices (e.g., lateral flow assays (LFAs), microfluidic devices, handheld Raman, and nanopore-based devices) for food adulteration detection has been comprehensively summarized and discussed. Remarkably, the challenges and opportunities in this field have been proposed.