CHAPTER 22 Biosensors as Analytical Tools in Food Fermentation Industry Lise Barthelmebs,'" Carole Ca las-Blanc hard, Georges Istamboulie. Jean- L ouis Marty and Thi erry Nog uer Abstr act T he food industries need rapid and affordable methods to assure: the quality of products and process control. Bioscnsors, combining a biological recognition element and a sensitive cransducer, are versatile analytical tools that offer advantages all classical analytical methods due to their inherent specificity, selectivity and simplicity. This paper reviews the recent trends in the development and applications ofbioscnsors used in food fermentation industry. focusing on ampcromctric enzymatic and microbial sensors. Introduc tion Fermentation is one of the oldest and probably the most important method in food process- ing. Wine, bread, beer and cheese arc produced since a very long time in order to preserve the quality of dairy products, cereals and milk. Fermented foods arc food substrates that arc: modified by microorganisms such as bacteria, yeast and fungi, whose enzymes hydrolyse polysaccharides, proteins and lipids to nontoxic products with flavor, aromas and tenure pleasant and attrac tive to the human consumer. Fermentation pl ays also other roles in food (i) Preservation of substantial amounts offood through lactic acid, alcoholic, acetic acid, alkaline and high salt fermentations. (ii) Biological enrichmemoffood substrates with protein, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids and vitamins. (iii) Removal of the natural toIic component or prevention of the growth of disease-causing microorganisms. Nowadays, food-fermentation is used worldwide to produce a wide diversity ofbcverages (wine, beer, cider and kefir) and food products (cheese, yogurt, bread, sausage, vinegar, pidded cucumbers, soy sauce and olives), which need to be control for the quality and for the &esh- Typically, the main analysis consist in the determination of food composition (sugars, amino-acids, vitamins, fermentation products) and the detect ion of contaminants (pesticides, heavy metals and nitrites), pathogenic microorganisms, toxins, antibiotics, allergens and hor- mones. Food produc t quality and safety are generally evaluated through periodic chemical and biological analysis. Ettept for microbiological assays, these procedures conventionally use che mical techniques like titration, chromatography, spect rophotometry, electrophoresis and in some cases biological m ethods such as and enzymatic determination. These techniques are not very suitable for routine analysis since they require expensive instrumenta- tion and highly trained operators, they are time consuming and sometimes require extract ion · Correspondi ng Author: l i se Barthelmebs-IMAG ES EA 4218, Centre de Phytopharmaci e, Universi te de Perp ignan Via Dom iti a, 52 avo Pa ul Alduy, 66 860, Perpignan Cedex, France. Ema il: barthel mG.univ-perp.fr Bio-Fanns for Nutract uticals: Functional Food and Saftty Control by Biost nsors edited by Maria Teresa Giardi, Giuseppina Rea and Bruno Berra. ©2010 Landes Bioscience and Springer Science+Business Media.