Investigating Quality Characteristics of Virgin Olive Oils from Crete. Integration of HS-SPME/GC-MS, 1H-NMR and FTIR-ATR Analytical Datasets

Branded virgin olive oils from different regions of Crete, produced from olive drupes (Koroneiki and Tsounati cv) cultivated in both organic and conventional groves and for two consecutive years were examined with three different omic platforms. These platforms were HS-SPME/GC–MS, 1H-NMR, and FT-IR-ATR, which have used frequently in the field of olive oil analyses to address issues of quality and authenticity [1], [2], [3]. Toward this direction, the three techniques were examined for their capability to provide information on the influence of geographical origin, harvest year, and farming regime. The main objective of the study was the development of a “cross-metabolomics” approach, that is the integration of the three different datasets with the aid of multivariate statistical analysis to seek out correlations and examine whether the diagnostic potential in the sample analyses is improved. Such an approach, which is ongoing, is challenging as data analysis requires huge amount of work and high skill of data handling [4]. The presented work investigates the application of the cross-metabolomics approach for olive oil classification and further comments on its usefulness and future work required for further development.