Nondestructive Preincubation Sex Determination of Broiler Eggs Using Visible Transmission Spectroscopy Combined with Multivariate Analysis

Abstract

To confirm the spectral absorbance associated with differences in yolk ratio would provide a means to determine the sex of broiler eggs, we measured light transmission (200–955 nm) through ROSS 308 broiler eggs (n = 269) prior to incuba- tion. Statistical analysis demonstrated that male eggs had a significantly higher absorbance (500–654 nm) than female eggs. Similarly, eggs with a higher yolk ratio had significantly higher absorbance than eggs with a lower yolk ratio, sug- gesting that the yolk ratio plays an important role in sex-related spectral absorbance differences. Moreover, a supervised logistic regression classifier model based on these wavelengths determined the sex of eggs with an accuracy of 76 %.