Virgin olive oil: Potential of different omics approaches to authenticate its geographical and botanical origin

Abstract

Virgin olive oil is the main source of fat in the Mediterranean countries with origin that dates back to ancient times. Over the years, this foodstuff has acquired an extraordinary reputation as valuable nutritional and health-benefit product. Nowadays, scientific evidences associate moderate daily intake of virgin olive oil with increased life expectancy and a reduced risk of chronic and degenerative diseases, such as cardiovascular, atherosclerosis, cancer and diabetes. These protective effects have been attributed to the particular chemical composition of this product, which is especially rich on monounsaturated fatty acids and bioactive compounds, such as pigments, phenolic compounds, phytosterols and tocopherols. Capitalizing on the accumulated results regarding olive oil health-benefits properties, the use of health claims for this product is officially authorized since 2006 by the United States Food and Drug Administration and, since 2011, by the European Food Safety Authority. Consequently, virgin olive oil consumption is currently spreading all over the world, even in countries where it was not traditionally consumed, such as United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan and China, and indeed, the olive oil market has become increasingly globalized over the last decades. The referred to internationalization of olive oil sector contributes to create market opportunities outside the Mediterranean region, where olive oil consumption level is relatively stable; it also entails important challenges related to strong competitiveness. Differentiation based on high quality standards, geographical and/or varietal origin claims is one of the most powerful competitive strategies that olive oil producers are currently adopting to face these dares. Thus, over the last years, there has been an increasing in the production of certified monovarietal and geographical origin-labeled olive oils in numerous olive growing regions. However, such products, which often are more expensive and show higher commercial value than the non-labeled ones, are targets for adulteration. That is reason explaining why, at the moment, there is a great need for accurate and promising analytical approaches able to restrain the authentication of the geographical and botanical origin of virgin olive oil. Within this context, the research in this field is moving from classical methodologies to advanced analytical strategies in which omics approaches, especially metabolomics (chromatography-mass spectrometry based methodologies combined to chemometrics) plays a pivotal role. Therefore, the main goal of the research conducted for the present Doctoral Thesis has been to evaluate the potential of different omics approaches to predict and authenticate the geographical and botanical origin of virgin olive oils, with special emphasis on oils samples coming from several Moroccan olive growing regions and different Moroccan and Mediterranean varieties cultivated in this country.