Rapid, Low-Cost Spectrophotometric Characterization of Olive Oil Quality to Meet Newly Implemented Compliance Requirements

Olive oil mills and enterprises demand fast and low-cost detection of adulteration from vegetable and seed oils, such as hazelnut, sunflower, soybean, cannabis, corn and almond oil, according to their food fraud mitigation plans. This study describes a method for the detection of adulteration using the k(232) and k(268) (specific extinctions at wavelengths 232 nm and 268 nm, respectively), and the Delta k (the variation of the absolute value of the extinction) values as independent variables in chemometric approaches. Different percentages of seed oils were added to the extra virgin olive oil and the results showed that vegetable and seed oil adulteration above 7.5% (w/w) was easily detected. The developed methodology is low cost, rapid, and simple for adoption by olive oil enterprises in comparison to other techniques. This is the first time that such an easy method may be applied for the olive mills for the protection of consumers using a well-organized food fraud mitigation plan.