'Techniques to detect food toxicants necessary'

From the viewpoint of ensuring food safety, there is a need to develop rapid, sensitive and specific detection techniques to monitor food toxicants, said M S Thakur, chief scientist of Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), in Mysore on Saturday.

He was speaking at a special lecture series on material science and personality development held at Vignan Bhavan, University of Mysore premises.

He said that pesticides and other fertilisers were entering our food chain, which needs to be checked to prevent complications on health.

“Even trace levels of these toxicants can inadvertently enter the food chain and cause several health hazards.” he said.

In his presentation, he focused on the applications of water soluble bio-sensors, developed with the help of nano-materials at CFTRI.

He said that such bio-sensors are efficient tools in the detection of food contaminants such as pesticides, pathogenic bacteria and other harmful substances.

Speaking on the recent advancements in nano-biotechnology, he said that the stability of these nano materials make them better than the other bio-sensors developed in the past.

Innovator Somender Singh, speaking on the impact of human activities on environment, detailed the environmental degradation affected by human civilisation in the past two to three centuries.

He said that the need of the hour was to reduce the damage done to the environment, especially by reducing emission of greenhouse gases.

He also spoke on ‘Refined Combustion Technology’, developed by him, which burns the fuel more completely and efficiently in vehicles, and also brings down the emission from vehicles.