Advanced nanosensors for integrated food quality, hazard, and environmental monitoring.

Food spoilage is a major global challenge with ethical, social, economic, and environmental implications and is intrinsically linked to food safety. Food products are highly vulnerable to deterioration throughout their food value chain due to loss of freshness after chemical or biological hazards related to traceability features. Moreover, the conventional quality control strategies and analytical methodologies are reliant on extensive sample pretreatment, labor-tedious, low-throughput, costly, and operator-dependent. This comprehensive review aims to examine how nanotechnology (NanoT) advances have driven the technological advancement of ultrasensitive, robust nanosensors (NSRs) for food safety, hazard, and environmental monitoring focusing on novel nanomaterials, nanofabrication techniques, and their integration into multimodal sensing platforms. The available evidence indicates NanoT through NSRs could represent a transformative approach in high-confidence detection of foodborne contaminants such as pathogens, toxins, allergens, pesticides, and heavy metals. NSRs are an analytical platform with a strong potential for quality and safety surveillance in food by being highly selective, sensitive, analytical robust, and real-time in situ monitoring. However, critical translational considerations for industrial implementation involve biosafety, nanotoxicological risks, nanomaterial mitigation, environmental fate and release, and consumer perception. Uncertainties regarding NanoT, due to its unfamiliarity with NMs, must be considered systematically, as well as consumer perspectives, technical feasibility, and economic viability. A multifaceted approach is key to overcoming the gap between NSR R&D and industrial commercialization. Integrating cutting-edge materials science, scalability, strong partnerships, intellectual property management, and robust business models is essential.