Business EconomyPosted at: Nov 20 2018 5:38PM


IIT-H researchers develop Mobile Phone-based detectors to check adulteration in milk

Hyderabad, Nov 20 (UNI) Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad Researchers are developing a Smart Phone-based sensors to detect adulteration in milk.

As a first step, they have developed a detector system to measure the acidity of milk through design of an indicator paper that changes colour according to the acidity of the milk. They have also developed algorithms that can be incorporated on to a mobile phone to accurately detect the colour change.

The Research, undertaken by a team led by Prof Shiv Govind Singh, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Hyderabad and comprising Dr Soumya Jana and Dr. Siva Rama Krishna Vanjari, Associate Professors in the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Hyderabad and others, has been published in the November 2018 issue of Food Analytical Methods journal, a statement here said on Tuesday.

Speaking about the importance of this research, Prof Govind Singh said, “While techniques such as chromatography and spectroscopy can be used to detect adulteration, such techniques generally require expensive set-up and are not amenable to miniaturization into low-cost easy-to-use devices. Hence, they do not appeal to the vast majority of milk consumers in the developing world.

Prof Govind Singh said “We need to develop simple devices that the consumer can use to detect milk contamination. It should be possible to make milk adulteration detection fail safe by monitoring all of these parameters at the same time, without the need for expensive equipment.”

As a first step, the research team has developed a sensor-chip based method for measuring pH, an indicator of the acidity. The researchers have used a process called ‘electrospinning’ to produce paper-like material made of nanosized (~10-9 m diameter) fibres of nylon, loaded with a combination of three dyes. The paper is “halochromic”, that is, it changes colour in response to changes in acidity.

The Researchers have developed a prototype smart phone-based algorithm, in which, the colours of the sensor strips after dipping in milk are captured using the camera of the phone, and the data is transformed into pH (acidity) ranges. They have used three machine-learning algorithms and compared their detection efficiencies in classifying the colour of the indicator strips. On testing with milk spiked with various combinations of contaminants, they found near-perfect classification with accuracy of 99.71 per cent.

Research team at IIT Hyderabad will extend the research to study the effects of mobile phone cameras and lighting on detection efficiency. In the long run, they hope to develop sensors for other physical properties such as conductivity and refractive index, and integrate it with the pH detection unit to obtain comprehensive milk quality check systems that can be easily deployed by the consumer using mobile phones and other hand-held devices, the statement added.
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