Rare-earth metal–organic framework-based luminescent sensors for environmental and food safety: Recent progress in pesticide detection

Pesticides are a key component of modern agriculture, protecting crops from weeds, diseases, and insect attacks while increasing crop yield, however because of their toxicity, persistence, and bioaccumulation, their excessive and careless use poses major risks to the environment and human health. The need for quick and accurate methods to track pesticide residues in food items and environmental samples is therefore urgent. Advanced sensing materials, in particular rare earth metal–organic frameworks (RE-MOFs), have become viable options for fluorescence-based pesticide detection in response to this challenge. The structural characteristics, luminescence mechanisms, host-guest interactions, and overall sensing performance of RE-MOFs toward various classes of pesticides are the main topics of this review, which offers a thorough evaluation of research conducted over the previous ten years. The potential of RE-MOFs to function as next-generation sensing platforms for guaranteeing food and environmental safety is highlighted, with particular attention paid to detection limits, selectivity, stability, quenching/enhancement mechanisms, and practical applicability.