Research Projects

India is the world's leading producer, consumer, and exporter of spices, producing over 60 different varieties due to its diverse agro-climatic conditions and soil types. The chemical profiles of essential oils in spices play a significant role in determining their quality, as they are used as medicinal and rehabilitative treatments. Various extraction methods, such as steam distillation and solvent-free microwave extraction, are employed to extract these essential oils. However, spices purchased from various market sources lack key bioactive components due to unethical retailers. Spice quality testing is crucial to monitor spice quality, and standardized analytical procedures have been devised for each country that imports spices. Traditional methods, such as organoleptic, analytical, and chromatographic methods, have limitations and are impractical for real-time measurements due to high-end equipment and skilled technicians. The proposed work aims to develop a portable detection system that can identify the presence of important bioactive components in spice samples using electronic sensors. The electronic nose proposed for spice quality assessment uses a quartz crystal microbalance sensor coated with molecular imprinted polymer for quality evaluation. The frequency of the sensor changes based on the concentration of target molecules in the vapor, and the outputs are processed by a signal conditioning circuit. The technology can detect phytochemical concentrations at the ppm level in various spice samples, and a correlation between the system's response and the gas chromatogram response will be verified.