A novel and low-cost smartphone integrated paper-based sensor for measuring starch adulteration in milk

Abstract

Milk adulteration is life-threatening, and hence, its detection is an integral part of food safety. Most of the currently established detection techniques are expensive, sophisticated, and time-consuming. Though microfluidic devices offer a promising advantage in this regard, they are mostly colorimetric with sophisticated image processing, however, with compromised accuracy. In sharp contrast to this, we develop a low cost, simple yet accurate paper-based microfluidic device for the detection of starch concentration in milk. A 10 μl sample is injected in the inlet zone of the developed device and the resulting color transition length is captured using a smartphone after 5 min of the sample injection, and the starch concentration is measured by an in-house developed app, “starch-app”. An excellent correlation (R2 = 0.9981) has been observed between the values of the starch concentration measured by the device and spectrophotometer in the range of 0–10% w/v. This novel, simple and inexpensive device has potential for its deployment in resource-constrained settings for estimation of starch adulteration in milk, especially in developing and under developing nations. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.