Nondestructive characterization gender of chicken eggs by odor using SPME/GC-MS coupled with chemometrics

Abstract

It's a difficult task for researchers to identify the gender of chicken eggs by nondestructive approach in the early of incubation, which not only could reduce the cost of incubation, but also could improve the welfare of chicks. Therefore, SPME/GC-MS has been applied to investigate its potential as a nondestructive tool for characterizing the differences of odor between male and female chicken eggs during early of incubation and even before hatch. The results showed that more volatiles were found in female White leghorn eggs during early of incubation and 6,10-dimethyl-5,9-undecadien-2-one, 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one, nonanal, decanal, octanal, 2-nonen-1-ol, etc. were important for the distinction of male and female White leghorn eggs during E 1 -E 9 of incubation. 2-ethyl-1-hexanol; octanal, nonanal, 2,2,4-trimethyl-3-carboxyisopropyl pentanoic acid isobutyl ester; 2-nonen-1-ol, cyclopropanecarboxamide, heptadecane were correlated with gender of unhatched White leghorn, Hy-line brown and Jing fen eggs, respectively. Moreover, sex-related volatiles have been strongly influenced by incubation process and egg breed, and to be related to steroid hormone biosynthesis. What's more, this study enables us to develop a new visual for ovo sexing of chicken eggs and advances our understanding of the biological significance behind volatiles emitted from chicken eggs.

Differential proteomics between unhatched male and female egg yolks reveal the molecular mechanisms of sex-allocation and sex-determination in chicken

“…In recent years, the variation of hyperspectral spectrum (E 0 ) and odor characteristics (E 1 ) have been used to characterize (identify) the sex of avian eggs by nondestructive approach ( Costanzo et al, 2016 ; Galli et al, 2018 ). Moreover, the odor differences between unhatched male and female eggs (E 0 ) have been confirmed in our previous work ( Xiang et al, 2022 ). It's easy to understand that sex differentiation of blastocyst is very low and the differences between hermaphroditic blastocysts should not be easily recognized during E 0 –E 1 of incubation.…”

Insights and Interpretation of the Trends for <em>in ovo</em> Sexing Technologies in Papers and Patents

“…VOC in ovo sexing has the potential of non-destructively measuring emitted gases from the egg in an early stage or even on day 0 before the incubation starts (Table 2) (49). Little is known about the models' robustness and if their accuracies are reproducible.…”

Noninvasive Assessment of Chicken Egg Fertility during Incubation Using HSSE–GC–MS VOC Profiling

“…22 Furthermore, in other studies employing an SPME fiber for headspace extraction, notably fewer VOCs were detected. Specifically, 14−18 VOCs were identified in chicken incubation eggs in research by Xiang et al 1,5,7 This underscores Twister's capability to capture a wider variety of VOCs compared to the SPME fiber.…”

“…Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from avian hatching eggs are known to carry biological information concerning breed origin, , sex, − and fertility. , Particularly, acquiring details about both the sex and fertilization status would result in significant improvements in commercial incubation procedures. In specific sectors where only one sex is preferred for commercial purposes, in ovo sex determination would offer distinct advantages .…”