RIVISTA ITALIANA DELLE SOSTANZE GRASSE, cilt.100, sa.4, ss.217-226, 2023 (SCI-Expanded)
Virgin olive oil production and usage have increased in recent years. Only mechanical or
other physical processes are used to extract olive oil from olive fruit. As an alternative to
traditional methods, new processing strategies such as high pressure ultrasonic (HPU),
microwave (MW), pulsed electric field (PEF), and ultrasounds (US) have been developed
to improve the quality, physicochemical and nutritional properties of oils while reducing
processing time and energy consumption. The top two olive oil qualities are extra-virgin
and virgin olive oils that have unique physical, chemical, and sensory properties. Reference
methods for determining quality parameters take a long time, utilise expensive and
dangerous chemicals, require an analyst knowledge, require a sample preparation, and
may have constraints that limit their use for a precise and thorough quality management of
olive oil. Recently developed analytical processes include NIR, MIR, FT-NIR, Raman, NMR
spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and chromatographic techniques with Chemometric
analysis (PCA, PLS-R, PLS-DA, cluster) to assess the quality characteristics of olive oils
quickly and accurately.
This review highlights the significant advancements in virgin olive oil quality assessment
and emphasizes the valuable contributions of innovative processing technologies,
analytical methods, and chemometric techniques in this field.