Office Paper-Based Electrochemical Strips for Organophosphorus Pesticide Monitoring in Agricultural Soil

Abstract

Although the use of pesticides has highlighted obvious advantages on agricultural yields, intensive and widespread pesticide use raises serious environmental and health concerns. In particular, organophosphate pesticides represent >40% of the totality used in the field of agriculture, and developing countries face the issue of agricultural poisoning, also due to scarce monitoring programs. In this work, a decentralized, miniaturized, sustainable, and portable paper-based electrochemical biosensor for the quantification of organophosphorus pesticides' level has been realized. The proposed approach highlights the use of a very common paper-based substrate, namely, office paper. Office paper offers several advantages due to its nature: it allows one to print conductive strips for electrochemical connection, loading bio-hybrid nanosized probes (Prussian blue, carbon black, and butyrylcholinesterase), evaluating pesticides and reducing waste disposal compared to plastic-based strips. The portable system has been characterized by a low detection limit of 1.3 ng/mL, and accordingly to total discovered pesticide contents in EU agricultural soils, up to ca. 3 μg/mL, it can offer a valuable tool for fast monitoring. To demonstrate its effectiveness, soil and fruit vegetables have been used to perform in situ quantification. Good recovery percentages between 90 and 110% have been achieved in different matrices, highlighting to be suitable for field measurements, and a good correlation has been obtained in comparison with LC−MS analysis.

A Critical Review for Real-Time Continuous Soil Monitoring: Advantages, Challenges, and Perspectives

“…64−66 Nevertheless, application of electrochemical biosensors in the soil environment is utterly challenging due to its poor sensitivity (<10 mV/dec) ascribed to the unstable biorecognition elements on the surface of biosensors. 67,68 For example, soil enzyme and microbial biomass can attach to the surface of biosensors, thus causing inconsistent binding for the target analyte, and ultimately result in unstable biorecognition (Figure 3). 69 One potential application of electrochemical biosensors in the soil environment is to detect agrochemicals, such as pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.…”

Towards Development of Molecularly Imprinted Electrochemical Sensors for Food and Drug Safety: Progress and Trends

“…Pesticides are favored in agriculture for crops and seed protection, as they help raise the output of agricultural products. Though the use of pesticides can produce significant market prospects and huge social benefits, the pesticide residues in food materials also have deleterious effects on human health [ 54 , 55 ]. Most of the used pesticides and their residues have long-term stability and biological effects due to their high persistence in the environment [ 56 ].…”

Electroanalytical Overview: Electrochemical Sensing Platforms for Food and Drink Safety

“…This was monitored using chronoamperometry and used to evaluate the analytes at the ppb level. Similar paper-based devices have been recently applied to the detection of organophosphorus pesticides in soil with a LOD of 1.3 ng/mL, with this system validated against LC-MS lab-based techniques [65]. Organophosphorus pesticides are some of the most commonly used throughout the agriculture industry to control pests and diseases and increase crop production.…”