Recent advances in nanozymes for organophosphorus pesticide detection in food

Abstract

Pesticides are widely used to control weeds and pests and improve crop yields, with organophosphorus pesticides (OPs) being among the most extensively utilized. However, the overuse of OPs can result in harmful residues that pose significant risks to human health. Therefore, it is necessary to develop effective methods for OP detection. Traditional chromatographic techniques are time-consuming, labor-intensive, and costly. Enzymatic methods often face the risk of false positives due to enzyme inactivation. To address these challenges, nanozymes, a class of nanomaterials with enzyme-like activities, effectively overcome the inherent limitations of natural enzymes. In recent years, nanozymes have been successfully integrated with cholinesterase to construct natural enzyme–nanozyme-based biosensors for OP detection. Additionally, nanozymes have been incorporated into immunoassay systems for the selective detection of OPs. Furthermore, nanozyme-based sensor arrays enabled the simultaneous detection and differentiation of multiple OPs. Although there have been many review reports on nanozymes for OP detection, these reviews only briefly introduce pesticide detection in the application section, and the introduction is not comprehensive enough. This paper presented a systematic review of recent advances of nanozymes for the detection of OPs, covering nanozyme types, material types of nanozymes, activity enhancement strategies, output signals, detection methods, and OP recognition strategies. It also provided an in-depth discussion on current challenges and future prospects in this field. This review aimed to establish a theoretical foundation and technical reference for rapid and convenient OP analysis. Furthermore, by exploring future research directions, this study might seek to offer novel perspectives and methodological guidance for nanozyme-based biosensors in OP detection.