Collaborators
- Shawn Christiansen PhD - USDA-ARS, CMAVE, Gainesville, FL
- Gary Butcher DVM, PhD- University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, Gainesville, FL
Lab Staff
- Jeremy Winders, PhD
Project
The US poultry industry hatches about 800 million eggs a year to produce hens for egg laying. Egg laying breeds are not used for meat production so male chicks are culled at 1-2 days of age. By developing methods to determine the sex of an egg early in development, eggs containing male embryos can be culled before the embryo can sense pain, increasing animal welfare. Early sexing also reduces industry costs.
Our approach uses high speed Volatiles mass spectrometry and machine learning to classify eggs as early as day 3 in development.
We recently purchases an Ionicon PTR-TOF 1000 Ultra Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometer are actively developing other applications for PTR-MS in agriculture including animal disease management and the processing of agricultural commodities.
Intellectual Property
U.S. Patent Application No. 17/120,656 “A SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DETERMINING THE SEX AND VIABILITY OF POULTRY EGGS PRIOR TO HATCHING”
Grants
- Sex determination of eggs by high speed volatile compound mass spectrometry and machine learning
Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research
2019-08 to 2021-08
GRANT_NUMBER: EggTech-0000000017
$396,000
Ionicon PTR-TOF 1000 Ultra Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometer