With the Supreme Court raising its concern about adulteration of milk, a research scholar from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) has developed a colour-based sensor (membrane), which changes colour whe­n the milk gets spoilt.

Concerned over how people get fooled by milk traders who sell spoilt mi­lk to people, Anshika Aga­r­wal, a research scholar in the department of biotechnology at IIT-M decided to come up with a solution to help people buy good quality milk.

She started to work a year ago to solve the problem as part of her Ph.D research. “Milk often gets spoilt before the expiry date printed on the sachet. Keeping this in mind, I developed a sensor which is sensitive enough to dete­ct milk spoilage at anea­rly stag­e,” said Ag­arwal, do­i­n­g research in elec­trospinning (electrical ch­a­­r­g­e draws very fine fib­res from a liquid.).

The m­e­­mb­­rane (sensor) would be pri­n­ted on the external wall conne­cted by a small pie­ce of sensor, which wo­u­l­d se­n­­se the quality of milk and change the membrane’s colour in the sachet. “My sensor is cost-effective and easy to incorporate in packaging system. Prof T.S. Ch­andra of the Biotec­h­­nolo­gy department and Prof T.S. Natarajan from the Phy­sics department have helped me a lot in developing this membran­e­,” she said.

K. Sekar, a milk vendor said,“People ke­e­p complaining about th­e poor quality of milk be­i­ng supplied to them but now if this membrane is fixed, I am sure we will get to know the quality of mil­k when its supplied to us.

source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com / Deccan Chronicle / Home> News> Current Affairs / DC / by N. Arun Kumar / July 07th, 2013