A first approach towards the development of geographical origin tracing models for North Moroccan olive oils based on triacylglycerols profiles

Abstract

The triacylglycerols composition of monovarietal Picholine Marocaine olive oils, produced in seven of the most productive areas in northern Morocco, has been established for the first time, starting a register of typicality and geographical identity of Moroccan olive oils. Two hundred seventy-nine olive samples were collected over two consecutive crop seasons (2011/2012 (n = 140) and 2012/2013 (n = 139)), the analysis of the triacylglycerol profiles of the obtained oils was performed using high performance liquid chromatography, the influence of the region of provenance was investigated, and chemometric data analysis (including principal components analysis, linear discriminant analysis, partial least squares–discriminant analysis, and soft independent modeling of class analogies) was used to differentiate the studied samples according to their geographical origin. Twenty-one triacylglycerols were characterized and the variability observed among the studied samples could be related to the production area. The combination of triacylglycerols composition with chemometrics provided a powerful tool to verify the geographical origin of north Moroccan olive oils.