Stereospecific analysis of triacylglycerol fraction to detect small amounts of hazelnut oli in virgin olive oil.

Abstract

The possibility of detecting small amounts of hazelnut oil added in virgin olive oil produced in Istria and Umbria region is discussed. The triacylglycerol (TAG) fraction of 230 samples subdivided as follows: 10 hazelnut oils, 10 virgin olive oils from Istria, 10 virgin olive oils from Umbria and 200 mixtures obtained adding 5% of hazelnut oil to olive oil, was analysed. In particular in order to study the positional distribution of the fatty acids in the glycerol backbone, TAG stereospecific analysis was carried out. The analytical data were elaborated using Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Neural Network Analysis (ANN). The results obtained allowed us to affirm that TAG fraction stereospecific analysis is an efficient method in the resolution of this problem regarding the detection of small quantities of hazelnut oil in virgin olive oil.