Eggshell Colour as a Monitoring Tool
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17108/ActAgrOvar.2025.66.1.135Keywords:
eggshell, shell colour, shell colour measurement, influencing factors, machine visionAbstract
Eggs, as a vital animal protein, are of great importance in human nutrition. In addition, the quality of eggs (composition, shape, colour, shell quality, etc.) plays a decisive role in their use as food, as well as in their processability, storage, hatchability, vaccine production, and more. These properties are influenced by the components of the egg, both together and separately. Consumer preferences for eggshell colour vary, with some buyers favouring white eggs and others opting for brown-shelled ones. However, beyond just the colour of the commercial eggs, the impact of colour on eggshell quality may be even more significant. Protoporphyrin and biliverdin result in a huge variety of bird egg colours. Different breeding directions have resulted in different eggshell colours in hybrids. The pigmentation of brown-shelled eggs is more pronounced in broiler breeder parent flock than in brown-egg-type layer flocks, but the deviation from the eggshell colour characteristic of the hybrid can serve as an indicator of the health status of the birds, feeding and production-related parameters. By collecting eggshell colour data, the trend of different eggshell colour changes can be recognized in time, and corrective steps can be taken to prevent deterioration to a level that can lead to the appearance of more fragile eggs. Machine vision is already used in the quality classification of eggs, however, the analysis of eggshell colour is not yet part of the process. Using machine vision, colour differences can be detected much more accurately, therefore, a tolerance limit can be defined in the colour variance of eggs from the same flocks to detect actual, flock-level differences. In this literature review, we studied the influencing role of eggshell colour with the aim of demonstrating that changes in eggshell colour have an impact on other eggshell quality indicators, which can influence shell strength and, through this, commercial egg quality or hatchability of breeding eggs. Therefore, with the introduction of machine vision techniques and machine learning, this can be a practical tool for the sector.
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