1H-NMR & isotopic fingerprinting of virgin olive oil and its unsaponifiable fraction to trace its geographical origin by pattern recognition

ALONSO SALCES, ROSA MARIA; HOLLAND, M. V.; SEGEBARTH, N.; MORENO-ROJAS, J. M.; FUSELLI, S. R.; FERNANDEZ-PIERNA, J. A.; BAETEN, V.; RENIERO, F.; GUILLOU, C.; HÉBERGER, K.

Cesena

Conferencia; XII International Conference on the Applications of Magnetic Resonance in Food Science: Defining Food by Magnetic Resonance; 2014

Università di Bologna, Università di Firenze, Università di Padova y Università di Roma La Sapienza

Virgin olive oil (VOO) is a high added value agricultural product in the European Union, in both commercial and nutritional terms. EU legislation protects it with quality labels on the basis of its geographical origin such as ?Protected Designation of Origin (PDO)? [Regulation (EEC) No 2081/92]. PDO olive oils are sometimes subject to adulteration with olive oils that do not fulfil the PDO requirements. Therefore, validated methods to guarantee the authenticity and traceability of PDO olive oils are necessary to protect both consumers and producers from illicit practices. We have evaluated several approaches for the geographical origin discrimination of VOOs by pattern recognition techniques, based on 1H-NMR spectral data and 13C and 2H data of the bulk VOO and its unsaponifiable fraction. Some of these approaches have been previously assessed separately in different studies and with different batches of samples (1, 2), showing their potential for the intended purpose. In the present work, the 1H-NMR analysis of the VOO unsaponifiable fraction is improved providing the complete 1H-NMR spectra of this fraction. Moreover, all studied approaches were evaluated on the same batch of VOOs by multivariate data analysis for tracing their geographical origin.