Application of Bio/Chemical Sensors in Food Safety and Quality Assessment

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the development of chemical sensors and biosensors has achieved amazing growth, and their applications are becoming more and more widespread. One important application is food safety and quality assessment. As humans pay more and more attention to health, food safety has become a popular topic around the world. Moreover, with the rise of nanotechnology, new nanomaterials and micro-nano sensing devices have been introduced into the sensor field and used to develop advanced high-sensitivity sensor devices, which has led to considerable developments at the technical level of food safety and quality assessment. This Special Issue, “Application of Bio/Chemical Sensors in Food Safety and Quality Assessment”, will introduce the latest developments and advances in bio/chemical sensors for food safety (electrochemical, optical etc.), including new sensor fabrication technologies, emerging synthetic receptors, and nanomaterials used in their construction. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The design and manufacturing of advanced sensors used for food safety and quality control;
• The detection and analysis of food adulterants;
• The quality assessment of food packaging;
• The detection of agricultural residues/industrial residues in food;
• The detection of veterinary drug residue in food;
• The detection of microorganisms in food;
• Immunosensors and enzymatic sensors;
• The implementation of innovative biorecognition tools (such as molecular imprinting polymers (MIPs), aptamers, etc.);
• The application of emerging technologies (such as microfluidics, artificial intelligence, smartphones, etc.) in the field of food testing

Dr. Valérie Gaudin
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• biosensors
• food
• contaminants
• agri-food analysis
• drug analysis
• microfluidic devices

Title: Profiling of organosulfur compounds in onions: a comparative study between LC-HRMS and DTD-GC-MS
Authors: Alicia Maroto
Affiliation: Maître de conférences (Assistant Professor in Analytical Chemistry and chemometrics), University of Brest, France
Abstract: High resolution and high mass accuracy mass spectrometry (HRMS) was used to analyze and identify organosulfur compounds in onion bulbs using a coupled LC ESI-QqToF instrument. Accurate mass measurements and isotopic pattern matching helped determine chemical formulae, which were confirmed using CID tandem MS analysis compared with spectra of standards. Samples were also analyzed on a direct thermal desorption–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (DTD-GC-MS) instrument (routinely used in this field of research) to achieve a comparative study of analytical tools. This approach was applied to several onion varieties and 21 organosulfur compounds were then successfully identified in most of the investigated onion samples. A comparison between DTD-GC-MS and LC-MS with chemometric tools was then conducted to unveil the metabolic profile. By using LC ESI-MS unwanted reactions or degradations are avoided (such as those occurring in GC-MS) providing then a more complete picture of the biosynthetic pathways of sulfur compounds. This marks a significant advancement in exploring organosulfur compounds in onions since such studies are scarce using HRMS. In addition, chemometric tools were also applied to study possible clustering between samples according to their organosulfur composition. These results showcase the potential of HRMS in characterizing onion varieties and their metabolic profiles, opening new perspectives for differentiation, and understanding organosulfur compounds in different onion cultivars from different origins.