Characterization of some olive oil quality aspects by nirs analysis of its fatty acids and triglycerides

Abstract

The development of new rapid techniques to characterize aspects of the quality of olive oils is of great interest, specially when they do not depend on the use of solvents and reagents. Two main areas of application of these techniques are 1) determining the varietal origin and 2) olive oil authentication against fraudulent mixtures of plant oils. In this work we have developed predictive models based on spectroscopy Vis/NIR that allow analysis of the composition of fatty acids (FAMES) in olive oil and accurately estimating their triglyceride composition. Strategies for developing fraud detection techniques on olive oils, based on the Vis/NIR analysis of their triglycerides composition and 'Equivalent Number of Carbon' (ECN), are being studied.