Water-injected meat leads to microbial growth risk, as well as being economic fraud.
In this study (purchase required) the authors designed and tested a colorimetric porous polymer microneedle patch to detect added water. Microneedle patches consist of hundreds to thousands of tiny needles, usually only tens to hundreds of microns long, which can extract tissue fluids and transport the extracted molecules to the backing layer for colour displaying. There is no need for sample preparation and often no need to open the packaging.
In this case, detection was designed and prepared using photopolymerization of an acrylate monomer with a porogen substrate and cobalt (II) chloride as colour change indicator and tartrazine as the reference. The colour of the microneedle patch changed from green to yellow with increased moisture concentration.
The authors reported that this discoloration trend of the microneedle patch during the moisture measurement of meat was very regular. The moisture measurement of meat in range of 66.9 %–75.7 % exhibited a good linear dependence on RGB values. The results indicated that the microneedle patch can visually determine the moisture content of meat in 3 minutes. It can be combined with a smartphone as a quantitative reader.
Photo by Philippe Zuber on Unsplash
