Effects of Intrayolk Injection of Bisphenol A on Hatchability and Sex Ratio in Chickens

Abstract

Sashihara, K., Yamashita, T., Takagi, T., Nakanishi, T. and Furuse, M. 2003. Effects of intrayolk injection of bisphenol A on hatchability and sex ratio in chickens. J. Appl. Anim. Res., 24: 113–122. The effect of intrayolk injection of bisphenol A (BPA) on hatching and sex ratio in domestic chicken was investigated. The fertilized eggs were injected with four levels (0, 1, 10, 100 ng/10 μl) of BPA in three experiments just before incubation, with a fifth level of 1000 ng/10 μl in experiment 2. The hatchability, embryonic stages of eggs failed to hatch and the phenotypical sex in gonadal organ were determined in experiment 1. There was no significant difference in hatchability and death ratios of each embryonic stage among all the treatments. In phenotype sexing, chicks injected with 100 ng BPA tended to show higher male ratio than the control. Besides phenotypical sexing in experiment 2, DNA sexing was conducted by polymerase chain reaction using a set of primers from the flanking sequences in chicken, but BPA did not affect gonadal sex differentiation in the chicken. BPA was not detected in the brain, liver and residual yolk in all treatments' in experiment 3. These findings suggest that low doses of BPA have no toxic effect on the hatchability and embryonic development in the chicken.