Technology Details:
Pesticides are well known carcinogen and their impact on human beings and presence in different food products including milk are well known in the prior art. The existing conventional chromatographic methods (LC/GC-MS) are time-consuming and laborious. Currently, new standards for pesticides have been developed by FSSAI and implemented for regulatory compliance in different food products including milk. For routine monitoring of pesticides under field application, three stage assay on paper strip has been developed based on “spore germination and enzyme inhibition principle”. In case where analyte i.e. pesticide is absent, specific marker enzyme (s) are produced by spores during germination which will act specifically on chromogenic substrate resulting in coloured end product on paper strip, whereas complete inhibition of marker enzyme will take place when pesticides are present in food sample (Patent Reg. 3819/DEL/2015). Simple and cost-effective technology for field application especially at reception dock in dairy/food industries.