KU Leuven Department of Biosystems, MeBioS, 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
KU Leuven Department of Biosystems, MeBioS, 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
Poult Sci. 2022 May;101(5):101782. doi: 10.1016/j.psj.2022.101782. Epub 2022 Feb 16.
The culling of day-old male chicks is an animal welfare issue within the laying hen industry that raises substantial ethical concern. Alternative methods are sought to pre-select males during embryonic development. This method is called in ovo sexing and allows more humane male culling. A robust and non-invasive in ovo color sexing technique was developed and validated in this research. To this end, visible-near-infrared (vis-NIR) point spectroscopy was used, which has advantages over state-of-the-art hyperspectral imaging in terms of accuracy and cost. Two independent experiments were each conducted on a batch of 600 Isa Brown eggs. These eggs were individually illuminated on d 8 to 14, and d 18 of incubation by a halogen lamp and the signal was measured in the vis-NIR range from 300 to 1,145 nm. Next, optimal preprocessing strategies were applied and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) models were built and further optimized after performing a forward interval partial least squares (FiPLS) for variable selection. Results demonstrated that d 12 is too early for vis-NIR in ovo sexing, resulting in a prediction accuracy of 86.49%. However, after 13 d of incubation, an accuracy of 97.78% was obtained, increasing to 99.52% on d 14. Furthermore, these accuracies were higher than earlier reported percentages from hyperspectral imaging and successful sexing was expedited from d 14 to d 13. Moreover, prediction improvement up to 99.05% was obtained on d 13 by correcting for the variability in eggshell properties using d 0 eggshell corrections. Applying the method on d 18 resulted in a lower accuracy of 94.62% due to stronger light attenuation by the growing embryos. Finally, a reduced spectral range of 749 to 861 nm was found to be sufficient for correct classification of 98.46% of the eggs. This paves the way for high-throughput and cost-efficient usage of smaller and cheaper spectrophotometers in commercial hatcheries.
雏鸡性别鉴定是蛋鸡行业中的一个动物福利问题，引起了广泛的伦理关注。人们正在寻找替代方法，以便在胚胎发育阶段预先选择雄性。这种方法称为胚胎性别鉴定，可实现更人道的雄性淘汰。本研究开发并验证了一种强大且非侵入性的胚胎颜色性别鉴定技术。为此，使用了可见-近红外（vis-NIR）点光谱法，与最先进的高光谱成像技术相比，该方法在准确性和成本方面具有优势。两个独立的实验分别在一批 600 个 Isa Brown 鸡蛋上进行。这些鸡蛋在孵化的第 8 至 14 天和第 18 天分别用卤素灯进行个体照射，并在 vis-NIR 范围内（300 至 1145nm）测量信号。接下来，应用了最佳预处理策略，并建立了偏最小二乘判别分析（PLS-DA）模型，在进行正向间隔偏最小二乘（FiPLS）变量选择后对模型进行了进一步优化。结果表明，在第 12 天进行 vis-NIR 胚胎性别鉴定为时过早，预测准确率为 86.49%。然而，在孵化 13 天后，准确率提高到 97.78%，在第 14 天达到 99.52%。此外，这些准确率高于先前报道的高光谱成像百分比，并且可以从第 14 天提前到第 13 天实现成功性别鉴定。此外，通过使用第 0 天蛋壳校正来校正蛋壳特性的可变性，在第 13 天可以获得高达 99.05%的预测改进。在第 18 天应用该方法的准确率较低，为 94.62%，这是因为胚胎生长导致光衰减更强。最后，发现光谱范围为 749 至 861nm 足以对 98.46%的鸡蛋进行正确分类。这为在商业孵化场中使用更小、更便宜的分光光度计进行高通量和具有成本效益的使用铺平了道路。
