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TITLE : DEveLopment of a portable, fAst and relIable device for in-situ detectiON of pesticides and phthAlateS residues in olive oil

PROPOSAL ABSTRACT
ELAIONAS is an ambitious project aiming to develop a novel biosensing platform for the real time and in-situ quality control of olive oil at the different stages of the production chain of the various sectors of food industry.
Greece is the third largest producer of olive oil in the world (11 % of total volume production), following Spain (40 %) and Italy (14 %). Greek olive oil is of superior quality, since 80 % of production is extra virgin olive oil (compared with 65 % in Italy and 30 % in Spain). Nevertheless, the increased demand by industry and consumers for high quality products and information, in combination with the small size of the olive oil farms and the fragmentation of the production units in Greece, makes its quality control an extremely complicated and time-consuming process, highlighting the ever increasing need in our days, for reliable, accurate and low cost analytical methods and point-of-need compact, portable, quality control devices.
Currently, the analysis and quality control of olive oil, during the production and packaging of olive oil, is performed by specialized public or private analytical laboratories equipped with state-of-the art systems such as liquid (LC-MS/MS) and gas chromatography (GC–ECD). Although, these methods provide very accurate results for hundreds of analytes in a single test and verify that a product is free from a large number of contaminants, they are expensive, and time-consuming with a turn-around time between 2 to 4 days.
Within this framework, ELAIONAS comes as an innovative proposal for developing a portable and user-friendly electrochemical biosensing platform, which will be based on the use of enzymes and aptamers for the sensitive and specific detection of insecticides and phthalate residues in olive oil that could replace the complicated and time-consuming heavy analytical methods. The availability of cost effective, fast time-to-result and compact biosensing tool will allow additional control methodologies and quality check points during production, resulting in the early detection and containment of the contaminated portion, with a positive impact in the quality of the final products and the economics of the production chain.
The laboratory prototype ELAONAS that will be developed by the partnership of Businesses and Universities / Research Centers in the framework of this project, will be an innovation of great value both for the national and international production and standardization of olive oil. It will be exploited primarily by the end user (MINERBA) as well as the other technological partners (HI, ΕΜΠ, ΙΙΒΕΑΑ) of the project, contributing to the development of involved enterprises, strengthening their competitiveness at national and international level, and creating new poles of scientific excellence and advance the activities of research organizations to the real needs of the economy and the market.

KEYWORDS:  Food safety, olive oil, biosensors, insecticides detection, Industrial research

 

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