"Discrimination of virgin olive oils with different geographical origin: a rapid untargeted chromatographic approach based on volatile compounds"

TL;DR

This study presents a rapid, untargeted chromatographic method combined with chemometric analysis to accurately determine the geographical origin of virgin olive oils, aiding regulatory compliance and authenticity verification.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, fast analytical approach using flash gas chromatography and chemometrics for geographic discrimination of olive oils, validated with high accuracy.

Findings

Achieved 89-93% correct classification of EU and Extra-EU olive oils.

Validated models showed high reliability with external data.

Demonstrated effectiveness of volatile compound profiling for origin discrimination.

Abstract

Many studies have shown that the geographic origin is one of the most influencing factors in the choice of olive oil. To avoid misleading, European regulation has established specific rules to report the geographical origin of extra virgin and virgin olive oils on the product label, but an official analytical procedure to verify this information has not been yet defined. In this work, a flash gas chromatography untargeted approach for determination of volatile compounds, followed by a chemometric data elaboration, is proposed for discrimination of EVOOs and VOOs according to their geographical origin (EU and Extra-EU). A set of 210 samples was analyzed and two different classification techniques were used, one linear and one non-linear. The two models were also validated using an external data set. Satisfactory results were obtained for both chemometric approaches: considering the PLS-DA, 89% and 81% of EU and Extra-EU samples, respectively, were correctly classified; for ANN the percentages were 93% and 89%, respectively. These results confirm the reliability of the method as a rapid approach to discriminate EVOOs and VOOs according to their geographical provenance.