Enzymatic Biosensors: Advanced Tools for Soil and Plant Health Monitoring

Abstract

Soil health is the potential of the soil to support the productivity of organisms, preserve the environment, and improve the health of plants and animals. Healthy soil is vital for agricultural sustainability and environmental resilience. The presence of high concentrations of toxic chemicals (pollutants and contaminants) in the soil poses a significant risk to human health and the ecosystem. Plant health is influenced by various factors, including the surrounding environment. To minimize constraints such as low nutrient levels, ecosystem contamination/pollution, and pest and disease incidences in crops, and to maximize productivity and ensure agricultural sustainability, advanced detection and management strategies are urgently needed. Diagnosis, prediction, and monitoring are essential for managing agricultural practices to mitigate these harmful impacts. The development of improved biosensing devices has been driven by the demand for quick, accurate, sensitive, real-time, and fast instruments for screening and identifying contaminants. Specific enzymes are used as the biological sensing element in an enzyme-based biosensor, which is combined with a transducer to transform the signal from the enzymatic reaction into a quantifiable response proportionate to the analyte concentration. Enzymatic biosensors need to possess high specificity, selectivity, reproducibility, stability, a low limit of detection, a low limit of quantification, and a rapid response time. They have a diverse array of uses, such as soil quality monitoring, water monitoring, food quality monitoring, pathogen detection, drug discovery, disease identification, and environmental research.