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

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) carry crucial information
about
chicken egg fertility. Assessing the fertility before incubation holds
immense potential for poultry industry efficiency. Our study used
headspace sorptive extraction–gas chromatography–mass
spectrometry to analyze egg VOCs before and during the initial 12
incubation days. A total of 162 VOCs were identified. Hexanal was
significantly higher in unfertilized eggs, whereas compounds such
as propan-2-ol, propan-2-one, and carboxylic acids were higher in
fertilized eggs. Furthermore, the obtained multiple logistic regression
model outperformed the partial least-squares-discriminant analysis
(PLS-DA) model, demonstrating lower complexity and superior performance.
Fertile eggs were accurately identified in the validation set in 68–75%
of the cases during the initial 4 days, to 85 and 100% on days 6 and
8. Finally, hierarchical cluster analysis in fertilized eggs revealed
the clustering of VOCs of the same chemical class, indicative of their
shared biochemical origin. This suggests a promising direction for
future research aimed at understanding the biological information
embedded in VOCs and their relationship to biochemical processes during
embryo development.

挥发性有机化合物（Volatile Organic Compounds, VOCs）携带着与鸡蛋受精状态相关的关键信息。在孵化前对鸡蛋受精状态进行评估，对提升家禽产业生产效率具有巨大潜力。本研究采用顶空吸附萃取-气相色谱-质谱联用法，对孵化前及孵化初始12天内的鸡蛋挥发性有机化合物进行分析。本次研究共计鉴定出162种挥发性有机化合物。其中，己醛在未受精鸡蛋中的含量显著更高，而2-丙醇（propan-2-ol）、丙酮（propan-2-one）以及羧酸类化合物在受精鸡蛋中含量更高。此外，所构建的多元逻辑回归模型性能优于偏最小二乘判别分析（Partial Least Squares-Discriminant Analysis, PLS-DA）模型，展现出更低的模型复杂度与更优异的分类性能。在验证集测试中，孵化初始4天内即可实现68%-75%的受精鸡蛋准确识别率，至第6天和第8天时，识别率分别提升至85%和100%。最后，对受精鸡蛋的挥发性有机化合物开展层级聚类分析后发现，同化学类别的挥发性有机化合物呈现聚集分布特征，表明它们具有共同的生化起源。该研究结果为未来探索挥发性有机化合物所蕴含的生物学信息，及其与胚胎发育过程中生化反应的关联提供了极具前景的研究方向。