Fast analysis of 4 phenolic acids in olive oil by HPLC-DAD and chemometrics

Polyphenols are important components of virgin olive oils, due to their antioxidant properties. Among the various analytical methods proposed for their determination, HPLC plays a dominant role, both coupled to UV-spectrophotometric and MS detection of the eluted component. However, the optimal time required for the full separation of all the components can be quite long. In this study, we investigated the possibility of reducing the analytical time of HPLC-DAD analysis of polyphenols by allowing the overlapping and coelution of some peaks, whose signals were separated off-column by two- and three-way resolution methods. In particular, we focused our attention on a peak where four phenolic acids (syringic acid, vanillic acid, p-hydroxybenzoic acid, and caffeic acid) coeluted. Both MCR-ALS and PARAFAC2 provided a good resolution of the peaks in the case of training and test samples, however the former technique provided the better results.