Photoconductivity in semiconductors is the electrical conductivity enhancement due to the electron hole pair generation induced by radiation exposure. This phenomenon is the main mechanism of photodetection in sensors. There has been increasing interest for nanosensors of all kinds which can be light weight and less expensive and can be easily incorporated into MEMS/NEMS devices. Nanowires as one dimensional high aspect ratio nanostructures have several advantages over their bulk and thin film counterparts when applied as photodetectors. Zinc telluride, an important II-IV semiconductor with a direct band gap of ~ 2.26 eV, has been considered as a prospective material for photosensing application. In this work, ZnTe nanowires have been synthesized by Vapor-Liquid-Solid method with optimized growth parameters. They have been incorporated in the well known single nanowire field effect transistor (SNFET) device structure to be electrically characterized in dark and under illumination. The wavelength dependent response of our ZnTe NW based photodetector has been investigated under near IR to near UV illumination.