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Sarfisis, D., 2019. Effect of dietary sage essential oil (Salvia triloba L.) supplementation on performance and egg quality of laying hens. Master of Science thesis, Specialization “Precision Livestock Systems” of the Postgraduate Studies Programme,“Master in Innovative Systems of Sustainable Agricultural Production”, Department of Agriculture, International Hellenic University, Thessaloniki, Greece, pp. 1–85. In an experiment with 36 laying hens (ISA Brown), 79 weeks of age, effects of dietary sage essential oil (SEO, Salvia triloba L.), supplementation on performance and egg quality was determined. In the 8 week experiment, hens were allocated to three dietary treatments (SEO 0, SEO 500 and SEO 1000) of 12 hens each, accommodated to 6 cages (replicates)/treatment of 2 hens each and received a restricted diet (concentrate mixture in mass form, 130 g/hen/day). The SEO was added to the diet at inclusion levels of 0, 500 and 1,000 mg/kg for treatments SEO 0 (control), SEO 500 and SEO 1000, respectively. During the experiment, no differences (P>0.05) occurred among SEO treatments in final body weight (1,931 g), body weight change (62.5 g), feed intake (118.8 g), egg production (0.847 eggs/hen/day), production of cracked, thin-shelled and shell-less eggs (0.019 eggs/hen/day), egg weight (63.86 g), egg mass (54.10 g) and feed efficiency (2.240 g feed/g egg mass). In addition, yolk index (43.65 vs. 41.19) and yolk pH (5.89 vs. 5.73) decreased (L: P<0.05), with increasing dietary SEO inclusion levels, and albumen diameter increased (Q: P<0.05, maximum in treatment SEO 500). The water-soluble protein content in egg yolk (110,45 vs. 39,02) decreased (L: P<0,05 and Q: P<0,05) as the level of sage essential oil content was increasing. Egg yolk water-soluble proteins (110,45 vs. 39,02 mg/g DM yolk) (L: P<0,05 and Q: P<0,05) and yolk total lipid content (62,49 vs. 57,86 g/100 g DM yolk) were reduced (L: P<0,05) as the concentration level of the essential sage oil was increasing in the feed. The antioxidant activity in ABTS radical cation scavenging activity (278,81 vs. 559,15 μg TE/g DM yolk) increased (L: P<0,05 and Q: P<0,05), as DPPH radical scavenging capacity assay (24,66 vs. 54,30 μg TE/g DM yolk) did (L: P<0,05) with the maximum value in both assays being in treatment SEO 1000. No other egg quality and chemical composition characteristics were affected (P>0.05). Dietary SEO supplementation, at inclusion levels up to 1,000 mg/kg of concentrate mixture, did not affect performance of laying hens and most egg quality characteristics.