Optical nondestructive inspection of chicken-egg freshness

Optical properties are widely applied in nondestructive inspection such as quality inspection, fresh degree and maturating differentiation of agricultural products. The principle and methods of transmittance technique for nondestructive inspection of chicken-egg freshness were investigated. The relationships between the freshness and the different storage days were also analyzed. A total of 200 chicken-eggs were tested in the wavelength range of 200～800 nm and all transmittance spectra were captured in a room with at (28±2)℃ and 55% relative humidity(R.H.). Using Origin 6.0, two correlation models including transmittance and wavelengths, transmittance and different storage days were developed. The models gave a correlation coefficient of 0.86 and 0.94, respectively and the sensitive wavelength used to inspect freshness was also found at 465 nm. It has been shown that optical transmittance technique can be feasible to rapidly inspect egg freshness.