Detecting adulterated milk made easy with this paper strip

March 31, 2016 Innovation Valli Sarvani No comments

Adulteration of food has been increasing steadily off-late in India. Most of the time, people are not even aware of the things that can/has been used to adulterate the foods they consume and their consequences. Even if some people know the consequences of adulterated food, they do not know how to detect them.

Avisek Barla, a final year B-Tech student came up with a solution to find the adulteration in milk. This 23-year-old is from IIT-Madras. His solution is very simple yet innovative to detect adulteration in milk. It is also very easy to manufacture. He developed a strip of paper which reveals the milk adulteration within seconds.

The paper strip is divided into zones. Nearly 33 adulterants in milk were identified by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). The strip can detect up to four adulterants in a single test: glucose, urea, boric acid and detergent.

The paper strip has reagents that are spread across the length. Once a drop of milk is put on the paper strip, the adulterants in the milk come into contact with the reagents and react with them. As a result, the colour of the paper changes which reveals the adulteration. This test is very similar to litmus test in its principle. Avisek used normal inkjet printer to “print” the chemicals in slight amounts on the paper and thus these papers are made.

Unlike high-tech adulteration detection techniques which are expensive, his solution is very cost-effective and user-friendly. Users can immediately find out the adulterants by just placing a drop of milk on this paper. Furthermore, they need not wait for a long-time to get the results. Thus, this innovative solution is very beneficial to normal people as well. Avisek won Gandhian Young Technical Innovation Award this year for his innovative solution. Now he wants to work on detecting more adulterants and also the contents of the milk like percentage of fat, antibiotics etc. His team is discussing with the companies to bring it into the market.