Biosensors for Sustainable Food-New Opportunities and Technical Challenges

New Frontiers in the Agrifood Field: Sustainability and Precision Farming Nowadays it is a common knowledge that to sustain the global increasing demand forecast for the next centuries in the food production system, sustainable practices should be adopted to protect the environment and human health. Food production and consumption have a strong impact on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emission, water and soil contamination, reduction of arable lands, water consumption and many others, which in turn negatively affect also human health. Also these issues produce heavy consequences on the economic development. To address these challenges, it became mandatory for a close cooperation among scientists with different expertise, policymakers and economists to develop new smart technologies, introduce them on the market and formulate adequate regulations. In this regard, a sustainable food production system could be thought as a chain of procedures with low impact on the environment and able to guarantee a secured supply of healthier and fortified food, supporting at the same time the economic growth. The development and exploitation of biosensors as supporting tools along the entire food production chain meet these criteria allowing the detection of food quality and safety with a reduced level of CO2 emissions, and organic solvent released in the environment compared with the conventional analytical tools. Indeed biosensor technology has the high potential to guarantee a comprehensive control among all the single steps of the food supply chain, from the crop cultivation and harvesting, to food process, transportation, packaging and distribution. Sensor technology is at the leading edge of the development in almost every sector. The market for sensors grew from EUR 81.6 billion in 2006 to EUR 119.4 billion in 2011 and can be expected to grow to EUR 184.1 billion until 2016, according to the newWorld Report entitled 'Sensors Markets 2016' published by Intechno Consulting, Basel (Switzerland). A huge amount of this market is represented by the biosensor revolution promoting sustainable foods in the near future. In this context, this book will discuss about the last trends on biosensor technologies, including (1) advanced technologies for fast, sensitive and costeffective determination of different targets to ensure food quality, safety, authenticity and traceability as well as (2) emerging technologies for crop xvii monitoring, accurate analysis of soil nutrients and pesticides or for maximizing the efficiency of water use for a smart agriculture. Thus the emerging innovations in biosensor technology devoted to food quality and safety control will be discussed in the first section 'Biosensors for food safety, quality and security'. The concepts of food quality and safety are crucial issues to get a sustainable and healthy food. Appearance, taste, smell, nutritional value content, functional ingredients, freshness, flavour and texture are all crucial parameters to be considered to this regards, together with its comprehensive estimation of freshness and the evaluation of the correct composition of the natural components (eg, sugars, amino acids and alcohols) and additives (eg, vitamins and minerals). On the other hand, safe foods should respect the legal limits regarding pesticides, heavy metals, pathogens and toxins, to avoid serious damages of human health and well-being, and consequent burdens on health-care system and economic productivity. In this overall scenario, the last trends on biosensors will be described considering the main advantages and limitations of this technology, to minimize threats that cause unsafe or offquality food. With the aim to optimize biosensing performances for a smart food chain monitoring, the las