Nano bio embedded fludic substrates: system level integration for food safety

This abstract describes an on-going research to develop bio compactable food sensor to separate mycotoxin infected barley and wheat seeds from non-infected seeds. Since 1999 research has focused on preventing and/or eliminating mycotoxin contamination in barley and wheat seeds with limited success. The mycotoxin, deoxynivalenol (DON), produced by the fungus, Fusarium graminearum, pose serious health hazards such as vomiting, dermatitis, and hemorrhagic septicemia in humans and livestock that limit the utilization of the infected grains containing high toxin concentrations. The US Food and Drug Administration have set the wheat advisory concentrations of 1 mug/g and 5 mug/g of DON in food for human and livestock consumption, respectively. DON-free or low DON grain is required for malting barley as DON carries through malting and brewing into finished beer. The farmers of upper Midwest greatly suffer because of fungal infection and toxin contamination as the brewing industry refuses to accept such toxin contaminated seeds. Rather the brewing industry import seeds from Canada. This research develops a solution to separate toxin contaminated seeds from non-toxin healthy seeds using biosensor technology. Over the years sensing technologies relied on silicon based inorganic substrates and electrodes to sense the presence of toxins. Toxins can be identified by understanding the required marker and interface proteins for the sensor. This research for the first time presents a method of embedding capacitor based sensor to detect DON. The capacitors uses shape memory polymers as the dielectric. The sensor process used for fabrication and data acquired from the biosensor application is presented in detail