Coordination chemistry-enabled sensors for rapid monitoring of food quality and safety

Food safety faces increasing challenges from microbial pathogens, chemical residues, mycotoxins, and complex supply chains, requiring rapid, field-deployable sensing solutions. The review aims to summarize the opportunities of using coordination-chemistry platforms in transforming theoretical concepts into real-life sensing devices over the food chain, i.e., soil, packaging, pathogen-sensing, and environmental remediation. A structured literature search was conducted using Scopus, PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of Science databases, where validation in real food matrices, device integration, and field trials were the main criteria; primary research, review, and technical reports published to the year 2026. Coordination motifs allow tunable molecular recognition, preconcentration, catalytic signal amplification, and dual mode preservation-sensing materials, examples of which are MOF-based preconcentrates, nanozyme catalysts, MOF-encapsulation of CRISPR reagents, and amine-sensitive freshness labels. Key translational barriers include material migration, regulatory complexity, reproducibility issues, scalability limitations, and matrix interference, which include encapsulation, ratiometric reporters, matrix-matched calibration, and pilot industrial trials. The review has highlighted low-cost, small-format, smartphone compatibility, lifecycle, i.e., recyclability, and environmental fate, and international harmony of policy. This review makes coordination chemistry a flexible and scalable platform on which to build next-generation food-safety systems, and is an actionable design platform bridging molecular recognition and next-generation device-level design and industrial scales. The manuscript is special in the sense that it introduces a single soil-to-package roadmap in which coordination chemistry is capable of facilitating sensing, preservation, detoxification, and smart monitoring simultaneously, it provides a systems-level framework yet not previously been consolidated in the literature.