Reflection of Physical Descriptive Parameters as Functional Phenes on Olive Oil Cross-border Mapping

Abstract

The medicinal and nutritional benefits of olive oil are reflected in its extensive incorporation in many cultures in food and pharmaceutical products. This study suggests the use of colour-based models, viscosity and refractive index as parametric attributes to experiment and track down the authenticity of the oil through image analysis and accurate determination of refractive index and viscosity of oils from different regions.The combination of RGB measurement and chemometric methods (PCA, PCA-class) of olive oil samples collected from distinctive areas (Tunisia, Libya and Egypt) enabled the differentiation of olive oil samples per region of cultivation and was found to be accurate, precise (R2X 0.997) and successful in detecting the accuracy of the labelled information (traceability determination, freshness, purity, date and storage conditions) and could be extrapolated to study the position of harvested areas. The results also revealed a perfect discrimination between the defined categories based on the origin and age after performing the Orthogonal Projection to Latent Structures-Discriminant Analysis (OPLS-DA) on the visible spectra of the samples reaching 90% of correct classifications.