Equipment-free and point-of-care methods for rapid detection of pathogens in food production: advances and key challenges.

Foodborne pathogens are responsible for millions of illnesses each year annually, highlighting the need for rapid and reliable detection methods throughout the food chain. Conventional culture-based methods remain the gold standard for pathogen detection but are time-consuming and often unsuitable for products with short shelf lives. Recent advances in molecular microbiology, nanotechnology and biosensing have accelerated the development of point-of-care testing (POCT) platforms capable of detecting foodborne pathogens within minutes, without the need for expensive and bulky laboratory tools. This narrative review provides a comprehensive overview of current POCT approaches for foodborne pathogen detection, including lateral flow assays (LFAs), isothermal nucleic acid amplification techniques, portable biosensors and smartphone-based sensing technologies. Each approach is evaluated in terms of turnaround time (TAT) and limit of detection (LOD). The incorporation of new nanomaterials significantly improved the performance of lateral flow-based devices, increasing the sensitivity and reducing the turnaround time. Similarly, advances in isothermal amplification technologies requiring lower temperatures and simplified primer design, have increased their suitability for POCT within resource-limited settings. Application of these methods combined to smartphone-based sensing technologies represents another attractive solution, combining (i) lab-grade sensitivity, (ii) specificity, and (iii) objective quantification of the biosensing signal into a (iv) portable, (v) affordable, and (vi) easy-to-use system. A range of portable biosensors has also demonstrated significant potential for sensitive POCT. Overall, these technologies have demonstrated sensitive and rapid detection of foodborne pathogens across a wide range of food matrices and represent promising alternatives to conventional microbiological methods for on-site food safety monitoring.