Biosensors: A New Era of Agriculture

The use of biosensors in agriculture has been a major development of human civilization, including the production of crops and raising livestock to achieve people's sustainable goals for food.

- Alka Sagar, Sonia Sharma, Saurabh Singh Yadav

Pathogens have been recognized as one of the major factors leading to a reduction in beneficial food production. Hence there is a need to eliminate the effects of pathogens. The traditional method of detecting pathogens is time-consuming and costly for farmers. The most common methods for the detection of pathogens in agriculture and food sectors are polymerase chain reaction (PCR), culture and colony counting, immunology based method, hand-held immuno-chromatographic assays (HHIA). Despite the real need to obtain analytical results in the shortest possible time, these traditional methods of detecting bacterial infections can take up to 7 to 8 days. This has spurred researchers' efforts for the advent of a new technology called biosensors. In 1956, Leland C. Clark Jr. invented the first true biosensor to detect oxygen, hence he is called “father of the biosensor.