Smart Micro-sensing: Reaching Sustainability in Agriculture via Distributed Sensors in the Food Chain

Agriculture is characterized by few large multinationals providing machinery and others marketing seeds and treatments, but the actual cultivation is in the hands of a multitude of farmers with varying degree of sophistication. Therefore, different from other industries where standardization of manufacturing processes enables for efficiency and good quality, agriculture is ripe for improvement in this regard. Concerning food safety, the interest for smart and portable biosensor is growing, as farmers need to understand better their operations and ensure quality. At the same time, current commercial solutions are not comparable to lab results normally available only to those large enterprises mentioned above. In this article we review how an inexpensive portable biosensor called EliChip can enable farmers to perform immunoenzymatic assays and with a wider availability of important data improve the sustainability of agricultural practices currently in use. The use of this biosensor device (lab-on-a-chip disposable card, LOC) is a promising tool devoted to the detection of contaminants during the whole food supply chain with the accuracy and precision of laboratory methods. EliChip probes are based on immunoenzymatic reaction using affinity biomolecules.