Geographical origin discrimination of olive oil by mean NMR and IRMS techniques

MORENO-ROJAS, J. M.; ALONSO-SALCES, R. M.; HOLLAND, M. V.; SEGEBARTH, N.; RENIERO, F.; GUILLOU, C

Limeñas Hersonissou (Creta, Grecia)

Simposio; TRACE 3rd Annual Meeting: Traceability: Perspectives from science, supply chain and the consumers; 2007

TRACE consortium and Agricultural University of Athens

Olive oil is an important agricultural commodity for the European Union. About 95percent of the olive trees cultivated in the world are in the Mediterranean Basin. About75 percent of global olive oil pFoductioncomes from European Union States; 97 percentcomes from Spain, Italy and Greece. Spain produces more than 40 percent of worldproduction.According to the International Olive Oil Council (IOOC) a system of ProtectedDenomination of Origin (PDO) classification, according to geographical characteristics,was established and applied in the European Union.Sometimes these PDO olive oils are subject to adulteration with olive oils that not fulfilthe PDO requirements. For these reasons, olive oil traceability is an important issue forthe European Union and, therefore, the validation of analytical methods to assure it andthe authenticity ofPDO olive oil is required.BEVABS group (work-package 2) has analyzed 671 extra virgin olive oils coming fromSpain (473), Italy (110) and Greece (88) by NMR and IRMS techniques..IH_NMRfingerprints of these extra-virgin olive oils, obtained by a high throughputNMR approach and multivariate data treatment, afforded a good classification of theolive oils according to their geographical origin among countries (Spain, Italy andGreece, >70% correct classification). Regarding Italian region olive oils, results indicatethe ability to distinguish among samples from different regions/areas (Liguria, Lazio,Puglia and Sicilia). Excelent results were obtained for the goal of the workpackage:Ligurian and non-Ligurian olive oils differentiation, >87% correct classification.Indeed, stable isotopic ratio measurements, DC and ~H,were performed for the oliveoil samples. After the statistical data treatment, the results obtained improvedconsiderably the results coming from NMR (improvement for statistical results forLigurian - NonLigurian classification in table).