The research group from the Department of Physics – comprising researcher Ilaria Bargigia, research fellow Sai Vamshi Krishna Damagatla and full professor Antonio Pifferi – is among the authors of a study published in the journal Newton. The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, HatchTech B.V. and Wageningen University also contributed to the research.
The team has developed a non-invasive light-based technique that could help reduce the practice of culling male chicks on farms. The study has shown that light, once it enters an intact egg, is trapped by the shell and reflected repeatedly inside it, travelling up to two metres within a space just four centimetres long.
By exploiting this optical phenomenon, it will be possible to analyse the contents of eggs without breaking them, check whether they are fertilised, monitor embryonic development and, in the future, identify the sex of the chick before hatching.
The results obtained could pave the way for new techniques for studying the optical properties of biological systems and for the development of innovative photonics-based tools for non-invasive analysis.
The research was carried out as part of LaserLab Europe and the I-PHOQS infrastructure access programme.