Microfluidic-Based Analytical Devices (μFADs)

The World Health Organization estimates that many people die each year from eating contaminated food. For this reason, the food industry is one of the most regulated and controlled in the world. Consuming food with high nutritional value, quality, and safety, is essential for a good and healthy life. Currently, the development of innovative analytical methodologies that allow easy, rapid, efficient, non-destructive, point-of-care detection, are the main research lines in food quality control. Due to high demand and the limited shelf-life of food products, maintaining the quality standards of foods at sustainable costs is a current challenge for the industry. Microfluidic-based analytical devices (μFADs) are powerful tools in food safety. Compared to traditional methods, μFADs have many advantages, such as miniaturization, automation, low sample consumption, high throughput processing, improved transport and control of flow conditions, increased reagent mixing speed, and reduced sample and reagent volume (down to nanoliters). The integration of microfluidic platforms and optical sensor/biosensor provides the ability to merge chemical and biological components into a single platform, giving rise to innovative new opportunities for future low-cost sensing applications, including portability, real-time detection, and simultaneous analysis of different analytes in a single device, among other. This Chapter reviews the recent progress in μFADs with optical transduction in food quality control.