Rapid smartphone-based assays for pesticides inspection in foods: current status, limitations, and future directions

Abstract

Smartphone-based assays to inspect pesticides in foods have attracted much attention as such assays can transform tedious laboratory-based assays into real-time, on-site, or even home-based assay and hence overcoming the limitations of conventional assays. Although an array of smartphone-based assays is available, information on the use of these assays for pesticides inspection is scattered. The purposes of this review are therefore to compile, summarize and discuss state-of-the-art as well as advantages and limitations of the relevant technologies. Suggestions are provided for further development of smartphone-based assays for rapid inspection of pesticides in foods. Smartphone-based assays relying on enzyme inhibitions are noted to be nonselective qualitative, capable of reporting results in a quantitative manner only when a sample contains an individual pesticide. Smartphone-based assays relying on chemical reactions also target only individual pesticides. Smartphone-based visible spectroscopy can, on the other hand, inspect individual and multiple pesticides with the aid of appropriate colorimetry-, luminescence-, or fluorescence-based assay. Smartphone-based visible-near infrared and Raman spectroscopies are suitable for simultaneous multiple pesticides inspection. Raman spectroscopy is of particular interest as it can detect pesticides even at lower concentrations. This spectroscopic technique can also serve as a real-time assay with the aid of cloud network computations.

Keywords:

• Complex chemical reactions
• enzyme inhibitions
• multi-pesticide residues
• near-infrared spectroscopy
• Raman spectroscopy
• visible spectroscopy

Acknowledgements

The authors express their sincere appreciation to the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) for financially supporting the study through the Chair Professor Grant (Grant no. P-20-52263).

CRediT author statement

Pheakdey Yun: Investigation, Formal analysis (equal), Visualization, Writing – Original draft preparation. Maturada Jinorose: Conceptualization (equal), Funding acquisition (equal), Formal analysis (equal), Writing – Reviewing and Editing (equal). Sakamon Devahastin: Conceptualization (equal), Funding acquisition (equal), Writing – Reviewing and Editing (equal).

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Additional information

Funding

The authors express their sincere appreciation to the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) for financially supporting the study through the Chair Professor Grant (Grant no. P-20-52263).