Guarding food safety with conventional and up-conversion near-infrared fluorescent sensors

BACKGROUND: Acknowledged by the World Health Organisation (WHO), over 200 diseases ranging from mild to fatal are linked to the consumption of food products subjected to physical, chemical, or biological contamination. Nevertheless, conventional methods commonly used for the identification of health hazards in foodstuffs have problems coping with the sensitivity requirements imposed by latest-hour regulations in the field. Additionally, their use and availability is wildly limited by aspects such as instrument dimension, prohibitive costs, detection complexity and required operational knowledge. AIM OF REVIEW: This review provides an overview of recent efforts that have focused on the assesment of food contamination based on near infrared (NIR) photoluminescent sensors. Important endeavors that have targeted the precise detection of various inorganic and organic contaminants, including hydrogen sulfide, cyanide anions, mycotoxins, antibiotic residues, etc., are presented and relevant challenges that lie en route as stumbling blocks for such sensors to reach the next level of maturity and to become more available, are systematically discussed and enunciated. KEY SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS OF REVIEW: Ingenious food contamination sensors that rely on conventional or up-conversion photoluminescence in the NIR region represent an emerging topic. To date, such sensors have been demonstrated as promising detection candidates, possessing important advantages such as: high efficiency, facile implementation, and convenient flexibility, thereby promising significant contributions to expand the current state of the art in food security.