J Anim Physiol Anim Nutr. 2019;00:1–9. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jpn | 1 © 2019 Blackwell Verlag GmbH Received: 26 May 2019 | Revised: 4 July 2019 | Accepted: 20 July 2019 DOI: 10.1111/jpn.13181 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Poultry Effect of in ovo glyphosate injection on embryonic development, serum biochemistry, antioxidant status and histopathological changes in newly hatched chicks Mohamed Ahmed Fathi | Ezaldeen Abdelghani | Dan Shen | Xin Ren | Pengyuan Dai | Zhaojan Li | Qian Tang | Yansen Li | Chunmei Li National Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center of Animal Science, College of Animal Science and Technology, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China Correspondence Chunmei Li, National Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center of Animal Science, College of Animal Science and Technology, Nanjing Agricultural University, No.1 Weigang, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210095, China. Email: chunmeili@njau.edu.cn Funding information National Nature Science Foundation of China, Grant/Award Number: 31772648 Abstract This study aimed to investigate the potential toxic effects of pure glyphosate or Roundup ® on hatchability, serum biochemistry and histopathological observation of the liver and kidney of newly hatched chicks. On day six, a total of 225 fertile eggs were obtained from Huafeng breeder hens. The eggs were randomly divided into three treatments: (a) the control group injected with deionized water, (b) the glypho- sate group injected 10 mg pure glyphosate/Kg egg mass and (c) the Roundup group injected 10 mg the active ingredient glyphosate in Roundup ® /Kg egg. The results showed a decrease of hatchability rate in chicks treated with Roundup ® (66%). In addition, no significant change was observed in body weights, yolk sac weight and relative weight organs except the liver and kidney were significantly increased with groups treated with glyphosate and Roundup ® compared to the control group. The results showed that serum protein profiles were linearly significantly increased of serum phosphor, uric acid, aspirate aminotransferase, alanine transaminase and alka- line phosphatase in groups treated with Roundup ® , as well as the serum concentra- tions of triglyceride altered after treatment with glyphosate. Furthermore, oxidative stress was observed in the treated chicks, the glyphosate and Roundup ® induced changes of the content of malondialdehyde in both the liver and kidney, moreover decrease of glutathione peroxidase, total superoxide dismutase and catalase activity in the kidney tissue and serum. Additionally, changes also happened in the histomor- phology of the liver and kidney tissue of the treated chicks. It can be concluded that Roundup ® as a probable decrease of hatchability. Exposure to glyphosate alone or Roundup ® caused liver and kidney histopathological alterations, serum parameters imbalances and oxidative stress, also induced a variety of liver and kidney biochemi- cal alterations that might impair normal organ functioning in newly hatched chicks. KEYWORDS glyphosate, hatching, in ovo, newly chicks, Roundup