Food adulteration and contamination (urea and detergent in milk, synthetic dyes in spices, heavy metals, pesticide residues) severely threaten public health across the food supply chain. Conventional laboratory assays like chromatography and spectroscopy require expensive equipment, skilled technicians, and days of turnaround time, preventing rapid on-site regulatory enforcement.
Develop a portable, rapid, low-cost, field-deployable testing kit utilizing nano-engineered materials (e.g., functionalized nanoparticles, paper microfluidics, biosensors) for on-site qualitative and quantitative detection of food adulterants.
Synthesizing stable, reproducible nanomaterials that withstand ambient field temperatures without degradation, ensuring high chemical specificity against complex food matrices, and designing a foolproof readout mechanism for non-expert field inspectors.
A compact field testing kit featuring functionalized nanoparticle test strips or microfluidic assay cassettes, a portable optical reader or smartphone-assisted colorimetric analysis app, sub-5-minute detection limits, and automated cloud reporting.