Development of Rapid Extra Virgin Olive Oil Quality Assessment Procedures Based on Spectroscopic Techniques

The main objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of developing multivariate models to estimate physico-chemical characteristics and antioxidant content of extra virgin olive oil from fluorescence spectra obtained at specific excitation wavelengths. Six replicates of each extra virgin olive oil sample were contained in clear glass bottles. Two replicates were subjected to four weeks of natural indirect light; two bottles for two days; and the third couple were kept it in darkness as a control. For each pair, one bottle was used for spectroscopic measurements and the other was sent to an accredited external laboratory to obtain physico-chemical measurements: acidity, peroxide index, K270, K232, total tocopherols, α-tocopherol, β-tocopherol and γ-tocopherol. Fluorescence emission spectra were acquired at different excitation wavelengths: 326 nm, 350 nm and 365 nm and partial least squares regression (PLSR) models were developed. The highest R2 values were found for excitation at 350 nm, reaching almost 0.9 in most of the parameters.