Rapid determination of the fat, moisture, and protein contents in homogenized chicken eggs based on near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy

Current analytical methods used for composition analysis of egg products are time consuming and laborious. We developed a near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS)-based method to determine the fat, moisture, and protein contents in homogenized egg yolk and the moisture and protein contents in homogenized egg albumen to substitute for conventional methods. The coefficients of determination in the external validation set (R2P) were over 0.8 for all chemical compositions. The ratios of performance to standard deviation (RPD) were 4.38, 2.25, 2.28, 2.31, and 3.03 for fat, moisture, protein and moisture in the egg yolk, and protein in the egg albumen, respectively. Thus, NIR spectroscopy could be an efficient tool for quantitative analysis of the nutrients in chicken eggs.