Scientists Use Forensic Techniques to Gauge Olive Oil Quality, Prevent Fraud

Much like deoxyri­bonu­cleic acid (DNA) helps solve crimes, it can be used to con­trol food qual­ity and pre­vent fraud. It plays the role of a true iden­tity card, and that still holds true for plants.

Using DNA to deter­mine olive oil authen­tic­ity and qual­ity has proven to be a chal­lenge, though. That was true until sci­en­tists man­aged to quan­tify DNA present in olive oil with the help of break­through foren­sic tech­niques, as a result of a coor­di­nated, col­le­gial effort.

The rea­son it is dif­fi­cult to use DNA in order to deter­mine olive oil qual­ity is that DNA dis­solves in water but not in lipids (under­stand: fat), and olive oil con­tains few mol­e­cules that can be rea­son­ably and rel­e­vantly exploited. Besides, DNA is very frag­mented in vir­gin olive oil.

Scientists from the University of Córdoba have teamed up with their coun­ter­parts from the Council of Scientific Investigation (com­bined with researchers from the Institute of Sustainable Agriculture) in order to tackle the chal­lenge that poses olive oil DNA authen­ti­ca­tion and quan­tifi­ca­tion.

The team of researchers man­aged to come up with an absolute way of quan­ti­fy­ing DNA in vir­gin olive oil by using advanced foren­sic tech­niques that are usu­ally reserved for crime scenes analy­sis.

Gabriel Dorado Pérez, a mol­e­c­u­lar biol­ogy and bio­chem­istry pro­fes­sor and the researcher respon­si­ble of the inves­ti­ga­tion group AGR-248 (Agri-food Biotechnology), as well as the Andalusian Plan of Investigation, Development and Innovation, gave his insight on the process: ​“Surely, con­sid­er­ing the fact that vir­gin olive oil is the juice of a fruit, it con­tains water drops in micro­scopic quan­tity in which DNA dis­solves,” he explained.

In order to col­lect rests of DNA dis­solved in the water con­tained in vir­gin olive oil, the sci­en­tific group of experts used a foren­sics tech­nique called the ​‘droplet dig­i­tal-PCR.’ That tech­nique allows ampli­fi­ca­tion and quan­tifi­ca­tion of DNA, even in tough-to-ana­lyze ele­ments such as vir­gin olive oil and even­tu­ally allows researchers to gather rel­e­vant data.

The aim of the sci­en­tific team’s efforts was to pro­mote cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of qual­ity, ori­gin, trace­abil­ity and fraud iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Those ele­ments have proven to be cru­cial in the global olive oil mar­ket.

Better DNA quan­tifi­ca­tion leads to greater con­trol over olive oil qual­ity and ori­gin. ​“The goal is to develop a trace­abil­ity method which will allow us to deter­mine if mono­va­ri­etal-branded olive oil bot­tles con­tain oils from other vari­eties, or worse, from other species such as sun­flower, peanut, or almond,” Dorado Pérez noted.

DNA from other sources present dif­fer­ent genet­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics; that is used to cer­tify olive oil qual­ity or on the con­trary to unveil fraud.

Indeed, frauds in the global olive oil mar­ket greatly impacts grow­ers, pro­duc­ers and mar­keters. The news of the group of sci­en­tists’ accom­plish­ment has been received with enthu­si­asm among many in the sec­tor.

• Diario C?rdoba


• ABCandaluc?a