Electronic nose for detection of food adulteration: a review

The food products may attract unscrupulous vendors to dilute it with inexpensive alternative food sources to achieve more profit. The risk of high value food adulteration with cheaper substitutes has reached an alarming stage in recent years. Commonly available detection methods for food adulteration are costly, time consuming and requires high degree of technical expertise. However, a rapid and suitable detection method for possible adulterant is being evolved to tackle the aforesaid issues. In recent years, electronic nose (e-nose) system is being evolved for falsification detection of food products with reliable and rapid way. E-nose has the ability to artificially perceive aroma and distinguish them. The use of chemometric analysis together with gas sensor arrays have shown to be a significant procedure for quality monitoring in food. E-nose techniques with numerous provisions are reliable and favourable for food industry in food fraud detection. In the present review, the contributions of gas sensor based e-nose system are discussed extensively with a view to ascertain the adulteration of food products.

Automated summary

In recent years, the risk of food adulteration with cheaper substitutes has become alarming, and current detection methods are costly and time-consuming. However, the development of electronic nose (e-nose) system provides a rapid and reliable way for detecting food adulteration.