Nanotechnology: A Boon for Food Safety and Food Defense

Abstract

Nanotechnology has the ability to innovate the agricultural and food processing industries, focusing mainly on target delivery of nutrients, determination of microbial and chemical contaminants, food storage, food processing and transportation, and also other aspects of food safety to enhance the shelf life of food. In the food industry, there are pervasive functions of nanostructured materials, from Metals, metal oxides of inorganic materials, and their nanocomposites to bioactive agents of nano-organic materials. Nanotechnology offers various benefits, but nanostructured materials raise issues related to safety. Therefore, safety and health-governing strategies should be assessed at the time of processing, preparation, smart packaging, and penetrating nanoprocessed food products. There is also a need for understanding of nanotechnology applications in the packaging and food processing industries to recognize the advantages and possible risks involved in use of nanostructured materials. In recent years, a new stage of nanotechnology has been reached for targeting the multiple field such as protein biomarkers, drugs, nucleic acids, cancer cells, and infectious agents. Carbon nanotubes, quantum dots, magnetic nanoparticles, nanowires, and nanosensors, such as giant magnetoresistance sensors, are used in quantitative detection of biomolecules, with moderately good accuracy. There is increasing interest in use of magnetic fields in biosensing applications due to absence of ferromagnetic property in biological sample and thus no interference during detection. Hence, the latest techniques in nanotechnology have wide applications for monitoring and detection of disease related to food.