`Rapid Test Developed to Check the Quality and Authenticity of Olive Oil - Olive Oil Times

Rapid Test Developed to Check the Quality and Authenticity of Olive Oil

By Jasmina Nevada
Aug. 9, 2021 11:01 UTC

Researchers from the University of Bayreuth in Germany have devel­oped a new rapid test using nuclear mag­netic res­o­nance (NMR) spec­troscopy to iden­tify the qual­ity and authen­tic­ity of olive oil sam­ples.

According to Stephan Schwarzinger, who heads a food authen­tic­ity and qual­ity work­ing group at the uni­ver­sity, this method pro­vides results within one hour and can be used to iden­tify olive oil sam­ples that are sub­stan­dard or incor­rectly labeled.

The olive oil experts were impressed by how quickly and thor­oughly the qual­ity and authen­tic­ity of olive oils can be deter­mined.- Stephan Schwarzinger, researcher, University of Bayreuth

Over sev­eral years, we col­lected and ana­lyzed more than 1,000 dif­fer­ent sam­ples of extra vir­gin olive oil,” Schwarzinger said. The NMR mea­sure­ment pro­vided us with an indi­vid­ual pro­file for each sam­ple with all prop­er­ties rel­e­vant to qual­ity and authen­tic­ity.”

Using the NMR spec­troscopy, researchers can iden­tify the type and con­cen­tra­tion of the main com­pounds of olive oil, includ­ing the dif­fer­ent fatty acids and polyphe­nols.

See Also:Researchers Identify Main Types of Olive Oil Fraud, Propose Solutions

Therefore, the researchers were able to ver­ify whether the health claims printed on the olive oil labels cor­re­spond with European Union reg­u­la­tion.

They can also use the method to deter­mine whether extra vir­gin olive oils have been adul­ter­ated with non-vir­gin oils or other types of veg­etable oils, a prob­lem with which con­sumers and pro­duc­ers have been deal­ing for mil­len­nia.

(Cuneiform tablets dat­ing from about 5,000 years ago describe an olive oil sur­veil­lance team” charged with inves­ti­gat­ing fraud in what is now mod­ern-day Syria.)

Cheap alter­na­tive veg­etable oils are dyed green and sold as olive oil, ran­cid oil is mixed with a good oil or old oils are glossed over with spe­cial tech­nolo­gies and come back into cir­cu­la­tion as extra vir­gin olive oil,” Schwarzinger said.

Along with iden­ti­fy­ing the com­pounds present in each olive oil, the researchers said that this method can also be used to iden­tify the prove­nance of the olive oil. This is done by com­par­ing the sam­ple with an exist­ing olive oil pro­file to deter­mine the cred­i­bil­ity of the dec­la­ra­tion of ori­gin.

Schwarzinger believes that NMR spec­troscopy can be the tool of choice for author­i­ties charged with iden­ti­fy­ing coun­ter­feit prod­ucts and stop­ping food fraud.

Our new test option met with broad inter­est. The olive oil experts were impressed by how quickly and thor­oughly the qual­ity and authen­tic­ity of olive oils can be deter­mined,” he said. This can sig­nif­i­cantly improve the trans­parency of olive oil sup­ply chains and mar­kets.”



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