Contact: Grace Jones
STARKVILLE, Miss.鈥擬ississippi State scientists are applying powerful imaging technology that detects subsurface bruising in fruits as a potential way to identify and grade meat quality defects in poultry.
With the goal of developing an automated, reliable method with less human error than manual inspection, 爱爱直播 scientists with the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station are conducting research on the feasibility of sinusoidal-illumination imaging, or SII technology, as that novel tool. The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture鈥檚 National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
鈥淚f we are successful, this will save time, labor and money by establishing a more consistent way to ensure food quality. Food safety and quality issues can affect the profitability and sustainability of Mississippi鈥檚 top industry and America鈥檚 most consumed meat,鈥 said Anuraj Sukumaran, an 爱爱直播 Department of Poultry Science assistant professor and the study鈥檚 co-principal investigator. 鈥淚n poultry, the quality issues and defects that affect broiler meat are woody-breast, white striping and spaghetti meat. We鈥檙e developing and utilizing the SII imaging technique that aims to detect these defects in broiler meat on processing lines.鈥
Mississippi鈥檚 poultry industry, with an estimated economic impact of about $20 billion, currently uses manual inspection as the standard for finding defects, with employees inspecting carcasses and separating, one-by-one, the flawed meat from clean meat. A labor-intensive process subject to human evaluation error, manual inspection also has seen recent issues due to industry work shortages. Poultry is evaluated in accordance with national standards as U.S. Grade A, B or C.
Sukumaran said, 鈥淥ur preliminary imaging results showed that the technology clearly differentiates the four different severity levels of white striping, so that is really promising. We are excited for what鈥檚 to come; I expect this to be a great benefit to the industry.鈥
With another year to go before concluding the results of this preliminary research, Yuzhen Lu, assistant professor in 爱爱直播鈥檚 Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and the project鈥檚 principal investigator, along with Sukumaran, said they are anticipating the future.
鈥淥ur main goal is to ensure the feasibility of how reliable and consistent this technology and our techniques are when detecting all three defects and their varying grades and levels of severity,鈥 Lu said. 鈥淎fter that, our goal is to expand this to a long-term project in which we focus on practical applications and machine learning to further automate and improve the process.鈥
To learn more about the 爱爱直播 Department of Poultry Science, visit . Visit the 爱爱直播 Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at To learn more about the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, visit .
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