Chapter Abstract-Terahertz (THz) application in food contamination detection

 Aifeng Ren,  Adnan Zahid, Xiaodong Yang, Akram Alomainy,  Muhammad Ali Imran, Qammer H. Abbasi

https://digital-library.theiet.org/content/books/10.1049/sbew542e_ch5

This chapter mainly focuses on various sensing technologies that have been employed to detect food and water contamination. It has been found that these conventional sensing technologies appear to be unfeasible and impractical to meet with the challenging growth of population. In this aspect, THz sensing is discussed in detail and deemed to be more effective due to its strong penetration feature, high resolution, and sensitivity to monitor the molecular changes in fruits. This chapter also introduces a novel technique of fruits contamination detection by monitoring MC and observe the transmission and path loss response of fruits. It also investigates an important parameter such as the absorption coefficient and shows some significant results and correlation of MC with transmission response and absorption coefficient. Upon close analysis, these results give meaningful information about the composites present in fruits such as carbohydrates and proteins. Toward the end, this chapter emphasizes on the advancement and development of terahertz technology applications and found that the THz sensing is a promising candidate and has a potential to change a paradigm in the plant science sector.

Abstract-Characterization and Water Content Estimation Method of Living Plant Leaves Using Terahertz Waves

Adnan Zahid,  Hasan T. Abbas,  Muhammad A. Imran,  Khalid A. Qaraqe,  Akram Alomainy.  David R. S. Cumming, Qammer H. Abbasi,

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/9/14/2781/htm

An increasing global aridification due to climate change has made the health monitoring of vegetation indispensable to maintaining the food supply chain. Cost-effective and smart irrigation systems are required not only to ensure the efficient distribution of water, but also to track the moisture of plant leaves, which is an important marker of the overall health of the plant. This paper presents a novel electromagnetic method to monitor the water content (WC) and characterisation in plant leaves using the absorption spectra of water molecules in the terahertz (THz) frequency for four consecutive days. We extracted the material properties of leaves of eight types of pot herbs from the scattering parameters, measured using a material characterisation kit in the frequency range of 0.75 to 1.1 THz. From the computed permittivity, it is deduced that the leaf specimens increasingly become transparent to the THz waves as they dry out with the passage of days. Moreover, the loss in weight and thickness of leaves were observed due to the natural evaporation of leaf moisture cells and change occurred in the morphology of fresh and water-stressed leaves. It is also illustrated that loss observed in WC on day 1 was in the range of 5% to 22%, and increased from 83.12% to 99.33% on day 4. Furthermore, we observed an exponential decaying trend in the peaks of the real part of the permittivity from day 1 to 4, which was reminiscent of the trend observed in the weight of all leaves. Thus, results in paper demonstrated that timely detection of water stress in leaves can help to take proactive action in relation to plants health monitoring, and for precision agriculture applications, which is of high importance to improve the overall productivity.

Abstract-State-of-the-Art in Terahertz Sensing for Food and Water Security – A Comprehensive Review

Aifeng Ren, Adnan Zahid, Dou Fan, Xiaodong Yang, Muhammad AliImran, Akram Alomainy, Qammer H.Abbasi, 


https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0924224418308768

Background

Recently, there has been a dramatic change in the field of terahertz (THz) technology. The recent advancements in the THz radiation sector considering generation, manipulation and detection have brought revolution in this field, which enable the integration of THz sensing systems into real-world. The THz technology presents detection techniques and various issues, while providing significant opportunities for sensing food and water contamination detection.

Scope and Approach

Many researchers around the world have exploited the potential of invaluable new applications of THz sensing ranging from surveillance, healthcare and recently for food and water contamination detection. The microbial pollution in water and food is one the crucial issues with regard to the sanitary state for drinking water and daily consumption of food. To address this risk, the detection of microbial contamination is of utmost importance, since the consumption of insanitary or unhygienic food can lead to catastrophic illness.

Key Findings and Conclusions

This paper presents a first-time review of the open literature covering the advances in the THz sensing for microbiological contamination of food and water, in addition to state-of-the-art in network architectures, applications and recent industrial developments. With unique superiority, the THz non-destructive detection technology in food inspection and water contamination detection is emerging as a new area of study. With the great progress, some important challenges and future research directions are presented within the field.