Recent developments and applications of nanomaterial-based lab-on-a-chip devices for sustainable agri-food industries

Background: Lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices have attracted considerable scientific attention due to their ability to incorporate multiple complex analytical processes onto a single chip. Such miniaturised devices can reduce most large-scale laboratory processes to small chips. Scope and approach: This review discusses the recent developments and applications of nanomaterial-based LOC devices for sustainable food and agricultural industries. First, we present a brief introduction to this topic. We then highlight the applications of nanomaterial-based LOC devices in the food and agriculture industries. In the subsequent section, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of such devices in food screening. Finally, we conclude the review by providing the future perspectives of this promising field for detecting and monitoring important analytes in food and agricultural products. Key findings and conclusion: Due to the miniaturisation of the entire assay, a minute sample is needed to perform the complete analysis quickly, thereby increasing the efficiency of the overall process. Thus, by exploiting the unique electrical, optical, and physical properties of the nanomaterials onto such LOCs, several properties of the sensing process can be improved, including the ability to selectively label the target analytes and thereby improve the overall sensitivity of the process. Such nanomaterial-based LOC devices have considerable potential in identifying nucleic acid, proteinic, and cellular components from complex food and agricultural samples with high specificity and, therefore, can be applied in the continuous monitoring of multiple agri-food analytes to ensure sustainability and food safety.