BITS Develops Low-cost Device For On-site Pesticide Testing

Hyderabad: A team of researchers at cpotentially reducing reliance on expensive laboratory testing. The technology is expected to help farmers, food inspectors and consumers make faster food-safety decisions.

The device, called PestiSafe, combines two independent optical sensing methods within a single handheld platform, allowing results to be cross-verified and improving reliability during field testing. The study has been published in the journal ‘Microchemical’.

Pesticide contamination remains a major food-safety concern, particularly in agricultural produce. While laboratory techniques such as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) are highly accurate, they require specialised equipment, trained personnel and centralised facilities.

“Food safety monitoring often remains restricted to centralised laboratories. Our goal was to develop a practical and affordable platform capable of delivering reliable pesticide analysis directly at the point of need, whether in agricultural fields, food markets, or resource-limited regions,” said Prof. Satish Kumar Dubey, lead principal investigator of the project.

The device successfully detected pesticide residues at very low concentrations and demonstrated recovery accuracies ranging from 92 per cent to 107 per cent when tested on real-world samples including unhulled rice, cucumber and tap water. Researchers said the results showed strong agreement with conventional LC-MS analysis.

A key feature of the platform is its ability not only to detect pesticides but also to differentiate between pesticide classes using chemometric and machine-learning tools.

“By integrating two independent optical detection modes into a single device, we have improved confidence in field measurements while maintaining affordability and ease of use,” said lead researcher K.S. Deepak.

Prof. Sanket Goel, co-principal investigator, said the dual-mode architecture provides internal validation by generating two independent responses from the same sample, reducing the possibility of false positives often associated with single-signal portable sensors.

The smartphone-connected device incorporates Bluetooth communication and custom-designed electronics, allowing users to visualise and interpret results through a dedicated mobile application. Researchers estimate the fabrication cost at about `7,000, making it suitable for large-scale field deployment.

The work was carried out at the MEMS, Microfluidics and Nanoelectronics laboratory at BITS Pilani Hyderabad with support from the science and engineering research board.