Rural Technologies

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Methyl parathio (MP) ( is an organophosphate (OP) pesticide, used as insecticide in agriculture to protect the crops from insects. Earlier, it was recommended as restricted pesticide for controlling the insect in the field of cotton, paddy, wheat, pulses such as green gram and black gram and oilseeds such as ground nut and mustard crops by Central Insecticide Board and Registration Committee (CIBRC). Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has set MRLs of MP in food commodities in the range of 0.1-1 ppm. Although it was not recommended for fruits, vegetables and spices however many newspapers have reported the presence of this pesticide in vegetables and spices also. Recently in Aug 2018, Government of India had completely banned 18 pesticides including methyl parathion for the registrations, import, manufacture, formulation, transport, sell and any types of application. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a method that is rapid, sensitive, selective, reliable, economically feasible and able to monitor a large number of MP samples simultaneously in its MRL range.

Present prototype (Figure 1) is software controlled microplate based optical biosensor which is able to detect methyl parathion pesticide in the range of 0.1- 1.0ppm (MRL value). This prototype can be utilized for monitoring large numbers of sample (upto 96). It has two components: first is the biocomponent consisting of bio-hybrid immobilized on wells of microplate (96 wells) (Figure 1B) which hydrolyzes methyl parathion (transparent) into an optically detectable product (Figure 1A). Second is the microplate reader (optical transducer) which is completely controlled via software for all operations. This biosensor detects methyl parathion pesticide in sample in 5-10 min while traditional analytical techniques are not specific and require 3-5 days.