Food Sensors, Explained: Smarter Safety from Farm to Fork

By Samudrapom DamReviewed by Bethan DaviesMar 27 2025

Ever wonder how your food stays fresh from farm to fork? The answer lies in sensors that work behind the scenes to monitor freshness, detect spoilage, and make sure what ends up on your plate is safe to eat. From ripeness to contamination, sensors are changing how the food industry tracks and maintains quality across the entire supply chain.^1-3

Image Credit: New Africa/Shutterstock.com

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Why Sensor Technology Matters in Food

Ensuring food stays safe, fresh, and high-quality from farm to table has never been more complex—or more critical. With global supply chains, shifting climate conditions, and rising consumer expectations around transparency, the food industry faces mounting pressure to deliver consistent quality and traceability.

Food quality isn’t just about taste or appearance—it’s a blend of sensory experience, nutritional value, and most importantly, safety. With rising consumer expectations and increasing environmental challenges, the food industry faces pressure to deliver products that are not only fresh and flavorful but also safe and sustainable.^1-3

Spoilage can happen at any point: during storage, transit, or processing. Factors like temperature, humidity, and packaging all affect a product’s shelf life. While a drop in quality may reduce a product’s appeal, it doesn’t always mean it’s unsafe. But when food becomes hazardous—contaminated with pathogens or toxins—that’s a real public health risk.

That’s where sensing technologies come in. By enabling real-time monitoring and rapid quality checks, sensors help prevent waste, catch safety issues early, and ensure food maintains its intended quality from source to shelf.^1-3

Meet the Sensors: Three Core Technologies

Food monitoring isn’t one-size-fits-all. Different types of sensors are tailored to detect different things—from microbial pathogens to chemical volatiles—and each has its own strengths depending on the food product and the parameter being measured.

Here’s a deeper look at the three main categories:

1. Biosensors: Precision Detection at the Molecular Level

Biosensors combine a biological detection component (like an enzyme or biomolecule) with a physical transducer to convert that signal into measurable data. These sensors can be electrochemical, optical, magnetic, or even thermal.⁴

What makes biosensors so useful? They’re fast, cost-effective, and don’t destroy the sample. They're especially helpful in detecting:

• Allergens
• Pathogens (bacteria, viruses, protozoa)
• Pesticide residues
• Toxins from bacteria and fungi
• Harmful chemicals like additives or heavy metals

They’re also used to monitor quality markers such as:

• Sugars and amino acids (linked to ripeness and taste)
• Alcohols and fatty acids (spoilage indicators)
• Biogenic amines (a freshness index, especially in meat and fish)

In the food industry, biosensors generally fall into two main categories: enzyme-based sensors and microbial sensors. Enzyme-based sensors are commonly used in beverages and alcohol production to detect flavor-related compounds such as phenols and amines. On the other hand, microbial sensors are designed to identify specific bacteria, often relying on technologies like ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays), optical sensors, and bioluminescence.⁴

Both types of biosensors offer precise, real-time insights into food safety and quality, making them essential tools for maintaining product standards.

2. Electronic Sensors: Mimicking Human Senses with Machines

Electronic sensors are designed to replicate human sensory systems—like taste and smell—without the subjectivity or fatigue that comes with human testing.³

Among the most widely used are electronic noses and electronic tongues. Electronic noses rely on nanomaterial-coated sensors to detect volatile organic compounds (VOCs), the molecules that give food its odor. They’re particularly effective for assessing meat spoilage, detecting food additives, and monitoring freshness in real time. By analyzing odor patterns through algorithms, e-noses deliver quick, non-invasive results that help reduce waste and enhance food safety.

Electronic tongues, on the other hand, are designed to analyze liquids by mimicking the function of human taste buds. They're ideal for evaluating flavor profiles, determining freshness and ripeness, and testing complex mixtures like soups, juices, or sauces. These sensors are not only stable and customizable but can also be fine-tuned to detect harmful substances such as mycotoxins.

3. Gas Sensors: Tracking Spoilage One Molecule at a Time

Gas sensors are becoming go-to tools for keeping tabs on food freshness in real time—especially when it comes to products like seafood, meat, and fruit that release VOCs as they start to spoil. These sensors offer a non-invasive way to monitor quality throughout the entire journey, from processing and storage to transport.

There are a few main types you’ll see in the food industry: metal oxide (MOX), surface acoustic wave (SAW), colorimetric, and electrochemical sensors. Each works a little differently—MOX sensors pick up resistance changes when exposed to gases, SAW sensors detect shifts in acoustic waves, colorimetric sensors change color in response to VOCs, and electrochemical sensors generate electrical signals tied to gas concentration.²

What makes gas sensors especially appealing is how affordable and easy they are to use. They're fast, sensitive (even at super low concentrations), and compact enough to fit into packaging or cold storage setups. When grouped into multi-sensor arrays, they get even smarter—able to track multiple spoilage markers at once and use pattern recognition to make sense of the data.

You’ll find them popping up in everything from smart fridges and food packaging to processing plants and supply chains. And the benefits go beyond just freshness—by catching quality issues early, gas sensors help cut down on waste, improve food safety, and support more sustainable practices across the board.

Real-World Applications: How Sensors Are Used Across Food Types

Now that we’ve covered how each sensor works, the next question is: where are they actually being used? Let’s walk through some key food categories—like seafood, meat, and fruit—and explore how these technologies are applied to monitor freshness, quality, and safety in real-world settings.

1. Seafood: Monitoring Spoilage During Storage and Transport

Seafood is especially sensitive to temperature changes and microbial activity, making freshness monitoring a priority across the supply chain. Gas sensors are now being deployed in cold storage facilities and transport systems to detect volatile compounds like trimethylamine (TMA), dimethylamine, and biogenic amines—clear markers of spoilage.

For example, researchers have used metal oxide sensors to monitor these gases in live oysters, identifying specific patterns (like rising TMA and carboxylic acids) that align with sensory deterioration. This kind of sensor setup can be embedded into seafood packaging or placed in shipping containers, enabling automated alerts when freshness starts to decline. In another case, gas sensor data was paired with predictive modeling to assess the freshness of grass carp during refrigerated storage, with models achieving up to 87.5 % accuracy—useful for real-time quality checks in processing plants or during retail display.²

2. Meat Products: Fighting Spoilage in High-Protein Foods

Meat products are particularly prone to microbial spoilage, which leads to the release of compounds like ammonia, volatile fatty acids, and TMA. To address this, meat processors are turning to gas sensor arrays and smart packaging systems to detect spoilage before it becomes visible or hazardous.

For example, metal oxide sensors have been used to track the release of fatty acids in fresh chicken, while electrochemical sensors have successfully predicted biogenic amine levels during refrigerated storage. These technologies are being tested not just in lab settings but in commercial refrigeration environments, offering automated, low-cost alternatives to manual inspections. One study even developed a TVB-N prediction model for chicken that reached 93.3 % accuracy—an approach that could streamline freshness grading during production.²

3. Fruit Products: Tracking Ripeness and Shelf Life

Similarly, fresh fruits like bananas, apples, and pears release ethylene and other volatiles as they ripen. To better manage shelf life, producers and retailers are using gas sensors to monitor these emissions and make data-driven decisions about storage and display.

Metal oxide sensors, for instance, have been used to correlate ethylene levels with banana ripeness, allowing producers to optimize shipping and reduce losses. Electrochemical sensors have also been embedded into monitoring systems for pears, apples, and kiwis, helping detect over-ripeness before it becomes a problem. These applications are especially promising for smart packaging, where small, low-power sensors can provide continuous freshness updates throughout the supply chain.²

4. From Lab to Supply Chain

While sensor technology has strong roots in academic research, it’s also making a real impact in the food industry—especially as companies look for smarter ways to track quality, reduce waste, and build consumer trust.

• Tellspec, a food tech company, has recently developed a handheld scanner that uses near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy to detect food fraud and contamination on the spot. Whether it's identifying adulterated ingredients or confirming nutritional content, this kind of instant analysis helps cut down on lab time and boosts supply chain transparency.
• Apeel Sciences takes a more biological approach, embedding sensors into their plant-based coatings designed to slow produce spoilage. By monitoring ripeness and freshness in real time, they’re helping extend shelf life and reduce waste—especially in fresh fruit and vegetable categories.
• Major retailers like Walmart and Kroger are also rolling out IoT-connected temperature sensors across their cold chain logistics. These devices continuously monitor conditions during transport and storage, flagging any temperature shifts that could compromise food safety or quality before the product reaches the shelf.

Not Without Limits: Challenges in Sensor Adoption

As exciting as sensor technology is, it’s not without a few growing pains. Like any tool, these devices come with trade-offs—and understanding their limits is just as important as knowing their strengths.

One issue is that calibration isn’t one-size-fits-all. Sensors need to be tuned to the specific food they’re monitoring. A sensor that works great for detecting spoilage in seafood might give you totally off results in dairy or baked goods. The complexity of different food types makes universal calibration tricky.

Similarly, they are not always budget-friendly. While basic gas sensors have become pretty affordable, more advanced setups—like high-precision biosensors or large sensor arrays—can still be out of reach for smaller producers or operations in low-resource settings.

In complex or moisture-heavy foods, sensors can also occasionally misfire—flagging problems that aren’t there (false positives) or missing ones that are (false negatives) meaning that there is room for error. That’s why proper validation and testing are so important before scaling.

And then there’s the data problem. Sensors generate a lot of it—which sounds great in theory, but in practice, all that information can quickly become overwhelming. Without the right tools to analyze, interpret, and act on the data, it’s easy to end up with dashboards full of numbers but no real insights. More sensors don’t automatically mean smarter decisions—unless you have the infrastructure to make sense of what they’re telling you.

Acknowledging these challenges is key to scaling these tools responsibly and effectively across different sectors of the food industry.

Wrapping It Up

From lab-based biosensors that catch trace contaminants to gas sensors embedded in packaging that alert you when fish goes bad, sensor technologies are reshaping how we understand and manage food quality. They offer faster, more accurate, and more scalable ways to monitor spoilage, ensure safety, and even improve flavor profiling.

But the real power of sensors lies in how they connect to bigger systems—feeding into predictive AI models, enabling smarter logistics, and providing data transparency across the supply chain.

As adoption grows, the question won’t just be “Should we use sensors?”—it will be “Which sensor, where, and how do we make the data useful?”

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Want to learn more about food quality monitoring?

Here are a few topics you might find interesting:

• The Role of Biosensors in Food Safety Applications
• Improving Food Traceability with Sensor Technologies
• Sensors in Food Logistics: Improving the Supply Chain

References and Further Reading

1. Sharma, N., Choudhari, M. A., Dabhade, D. N., Bari, S. J. (2024). Sensors in Food Industry: A Review. International Journal of Advanced Research in Science Communication and Technology, DOI: 10.48175/IJARSCT-15924, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379491732_Sensors_in_Food_Industry_A_Review
2. Ma, M., Yang, X., Ying, X., Shi, C., Jia, Z., Jia, B. (2023). Applications of Gas Sensing in Food Quality Detection: A Review. Foods, 12(21), 3966. DOI: 10.3390/foods12213966, https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/12/21/3966
3. Gil, M., Rudy, M., Stanisławczyk, R. (2025). Electronic Sensing Technologies in Food Quality Assessment: A Comprehensive Literature Review. Applied Sciences, 15(3), 1530. DOI: 10.3390/app15031530, https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/15/3/1530
4. Shams, R., Singh, J., Ashraf, S., Manzoor, M., Dar, A. (2020). Application of biosensors in food quality control. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345179033_Application_of_biosensors_in_food_quality_control

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