Detection of Ciprofloxacin Antibiotics in Milk through Microchip Capillary Electrophoresis Actuation and Fluorescence Spectroscopy Sensing

Abstract

Antibiotic residue in milk is a health hazard for people with antibiotic allergies and can also create antibiotic resistance. For these reasons, stringent controls are in place in processing plants to avoid accepting contaminated milk and large fines are levied against farmers who ship contaminated milk. However, the currently available methods to detect antibiotics in milk are manual and cannot be interfaced with the milking equipment to allow automatic quarantine. This thesis addresses this limitation by developing a method using microchip capillary electrophoresis which can be used to detect ciprofloxacin antibiotics in milk. This method used low cost components such as an ultra-violet (UV) light emitting diode (LED) and a photodiode to perform the illumination and detection respectively. It is expected that the successful outcome of this research will result in this technology being integrated with milking equipment to provide automatic quarantine of contaminated milk.