Fluorescent nanosensors for detection of microbial toxins in food matrices: a review

The food industry is unceasingly searching for accurate ways to check food safety. The presence of microbial toxins such as bacterial toxins, fungal toxins, and algal toxins in food products has become a concerning issue worldwide. These toxins can contaminate food during various stages of its production, transportation, and storage, posing a serious threat to human health. The reliable and quick determination of microbial toxins has become significant for eliminating the disease outbreaks caused by contaminated foodstuffs. Thus, there is an increased interest in developing low-cost and high-throughput sensors for the determination of microbial toxins in food matrices. Recently, fluorescent sensors have gained importance as one of the effective alternatives in food safety monitoring. The use of nanomaterials in the fabrication of fluorescent sensors has imparted amazing properties such as high selectivity and sensitivity, rapid results, good stability, and reproducibility to analyze microbial toxins in real food matrices. The present review summarizes the recent developments in nanomaterial-based fluorescent sensors for the detection of microbial toxins in food products. The review delves into the details of various fluorescent nanomaterials such as metal-based nanomaterials, upconversion nanoparticles, semiconductor quantum dots, carbon-based nanomaterials, and luminescent metal-organic frameworks describing their unique properties, advantages, drawbacks, and applications in the detection of microbial toxins in food products. Also, the performance comparison of the fluorescent nanomaterials in the detection of these toxins has been discussed. Further, the commercial aspects of fluorescent nanosensors for the detection of microbial toxins have been included, along with the future insights and challenges associated with microbial toxin detection.