New sensors are giving more detailed information about the kinetics and equilibrium in chemical and biochemical reactors, which is subsequently used to control the process in each of its stages augmenting the productivity and improving the quality. Biosensors in life sciences help to understand the functioning of systems within life species, including humans, discovering the very essence of life, sources of diseases, and preventing the spread of illnesses capable of decimating the human race. The interaction between the field of basic biochemical and biological investigations and the field of biosensors investigation is very fruitful, because new principles of bioreactions help to design new class of biosensors, which in turn give new information on biochemical and biological functioning. The increase of knowledge in general led to interdisciplinary approach in solving different problems. The excitement in research of chemical and biochemical sensors is due to its interdisciplinarity, hardly found in any other field, where chemists, biochemists, physicists, chemical and biochemical engineers and technologists, electrical and mechanical engineers, biologists, doctors of medicine, mathematicians etc. are working together in development and applications of new chemical and biochemical sensors.
Commercial interest is also an important factor which stimulates research of sensors.
The largest market for chemical and biochemical sensors are clinical and health care applications, food industry, chemical and biochemical engineering process monitoring and control and environmental monitoring. Glucose determination in blood, as well as in sugar and syrup, alcohol determination in wines, penicillin in milk, biogenic amines as indicators of food freshness, pesticides, toxins and microbes determination in soil, water and food products, etc. are uncountable assays performed daily by many institutions around the world. These are only some of the very convincing arguments and reasons which explain why the field of chemical and biochemical sensors research is so important today, although many of the principles used in chemical sensing were discovered 50 to 80 years ago. In this issue of Food Technology and Biotechnology on Chemical and Biochemical Sensors there are some reviews together with some original scientific papers in order to give more or less representative cross-section of the field. In the reviews there might appear some overlapping of the covered subject.