Discrimination of virgin olive oil defects—comparison of two evaluation methods: HS-SPME GC-MS and electronic nose

Abstract

Abstract The headspace analysis of olive oil volatile compounds can be performed using solid phase microextraction (SPME) GC-MS and the electronic nose. This paper presents a comparison of these methods to evaluate their ability to detect the most important olive oil defects such as ‘sludge’, ‘heated’ and ‘vinegary’, and to classify the olive oils according to off-flavour intensities. The research was carried out on blends of refined olive oil and virgin olive oils (I.O.O.C. certification) with the defects indicated above at adequate concentrations to reach four different odour thresholds. Furthermore, by SPME GC-MS, the most abundant volatile compounds were identified for each defect considered.