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The XIII European Symposium on the Quality of Eggs and Egg Products, Turku, Finland, 21 - 25 June 2009, (Summary Text)
Eggs are one of the most foods that are used throughout the world today. However, many physiological and chemical changes occur in the eggs during storage. The most accepted phenomena during storage of eggs are; albumen liquefaction, pH increment, flattening of the yolk and growth of air cell height.
According to studies up to date, there are some known traditional methods measuring eggs quality parameter such as Haugh unit, albumen index, egg weight, albumen and yolk weight, membrane thickness. These traditional techniques measuring qualities suffer from several problems.
Non-destructive and destructive observations techniques are draw attention through researches and indurstry experts for grading eggs. The demands for reliable egg quality assesment techniques have resulted in the development of novel techniques.
A few examples for these attractive novel techniques are measuring viscosity, dielectric, optical and acoustic properties, electronic nose-based system, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) system, VIS-NIR (near infrared) spectroscopic and NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopic techniques. Optionally, the height of the albumen is measured by a alaser or ultrasound for the evaluation of egg freshenss.
This paper gives an overview of these vey promising novel techniques for characterize the quality of shell egg during storage.
Keywords: shell egg, non-destructive novel techniques, shelf life and quality.