Dear Colleagues,

Agricultural and food safety is an increasingly important public health issue for both consumers and the food industry. In agro-food practices, farmers use numerous pesticides to protect crops and food before and after harvesting. “Pesticide” is a term used in a broad sense for organic toxic compounds, including heavy metal ions, and pesticide residues may enter into the food chain through air, water, and soil. They affect ecosystems and cause several health problems in animals and humans. They can be carcinogenic and/or cytotoxic, and can produce bone marrow and nerve disorders, infertility, and immunological and respiratory diseases. The detection of pesticides, toxins, and metal ions at the levels established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) remains a challenge.

The growing production of foodstuffs and the ever-present threat of agricultural and food contamination have forced the industry to pursue simple, rapid, and cost-effective analytical approaches for the detection of harmful residues in agricultural products to ensure the health of consumers.

Conventional methods coupled to selective detectors have traditionally been used for pesticide/toxin/heavy metal analysis due to their sensitivity, reliability, and efficiency. Nevertheless, they are time consuming and laborious, and require expensive equipment and highly trained technicians. With the rapid development of nanotechnology and biological technology, biosensing techniques integrated with new materials and devices have shown great potential in agricultural and food industries.

Over the past decade, considerable attention has been given to the development of biosensors for the detection of pesticides as a promising alternative. A biosensor is a self-contained device that integrates an immobilized biological element (e.g., enzyme, DNA probe, antibody) that recognizes the analyte (e.g., enzyme substrate, complementary DNA, antigen) and a transduction element used to convert the (bio)chemical signal resulting from the interaction of the analyte with the bioreceptor into an electronic one. Additionally, their low cost, simple design, and small size make them excellent candidates for the development of rapid and portable biosensors.

To clearly report the latest advances, biosensors have been classified according to their immobilized recognition element. New trends in the field of pesticide analysis are also reviewed. Aptamers are shown as good candidates to replace the conventional antibodies and, thus, to be the biorecognition elements in more robust and stable biosensors for pesticide detection. Recent reports on the properties of nanomaterials show nanoparticles and nanotubes as promising tools to improve the efficiency of biosensors for the detection of pesticides. Over the past several years, the number of publications related to biosensors and the detection of harmful residues in agricultural products have increased rapidly, which implies that biosensors are playing an important role in safety issues related to agriculture, the food industry, and the environment.

This Special Issue is designed to gather recent findings of newly established biosensors and nanomaterials in this platform to enable the detection of several biological hazards (including pesticides, toxins, and heavy metal ions) to assist in disease diagnosis. We invite review and original research articles that focus on understanding nanomaterial-coupled biosensors for the detection of food toxicants, pathogens, agricultural pesticides, heavy metal ions, and other analytes related to environmental and human health.

Prof. Dr. Shruti Shukla
Dr. Yun Suk Huh
Dr. Vivek K. Bajpai
Guest Editors

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