Preliminary study on the potential application of Fourier‐transform mid‐infrared for the evaluation of overall quality and authenticity of Moroccan virgin olive oil

BACKGROUND Olive oil provides a wide range of health‐promoting compounds. The quality of olive oil is an even more complex concept as it is affected by several factors, such as variety, season, stage of maturation, extraction processing, and so on. The main objective of this study was to determine the potential of chemical and mid‐infrared spectroscopy techniques to determine the quality and authenticity of virgin olive oil (VOO). For this, we studied 41 VOOs originating from five regions of Morocco (Fez/Meknes, Eastern, Northern, Beni‐Mellal/Khenifra, and Marrakech/Safi) and produced using different agricultural and technological conditions during two successive crop seasons (2015–2016 and 2016–2017). RESULTS By applying principal component analysis and factorial discriminant analysis with leave‐one‐out validation to the mid‐infrared spectroscopy, clear discrimination between VOO samples according to their geographic origin and variety was observed, with correct classification rates of 91.87% and 91.87% being observed respectively. The application of partial least‐squares regression to mid‐infrared and chemical data sets allowed excellent prediction of free acidity, peroxide value, k270, and chlorophyll level with R2 of 0.99, 0.97, 0.98, and 0.93 respectively, and good prediction of k232 (R2 = 0.84). CONCLUSION The results demonstrate that mid‐infrared spectroscopy coupled with chemometric tools could be used as a rapid screening tool for evaluating the overall quality and authenticity of VOO. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry