Recognition of volatile compounds as markers in geographical discrimination of Spanish extra virgin olive oils by chemometric analysis of non-specific chromatography volatile profiles

Chromatographic profiles obtained by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) coupled with gas chromatography (GC) were processed as continuous and non-specific signals through multivariate analysis techniques in order to select and identify the most discriminate volatile marker compounds related to the geographical origin of extra virgin olive oils. The blind analysis of the chromatographic profiles was carried out on several steps including preliminary mathematical treatments, explorative analysis, feature selection and classification. The results obtained through the application of stepwise linear discriminant analysis (SLDA) method revealed a perfect discrimination between the different Spanish geographical regions considered (La Rioja, Andalusia and Catalonia). The assignment success rate was 100% in both classification and prediction by using cross validation procedure. In addition, it must be noted that the proposed strategy was able to verify the geographical origin of the samples involving only a reduced number of discriminate retention times selected by the stepwise procedure. This fact emphasizes the quality of the accurate results obtained and encourages the feasibility of similar procedures in olive oil quality and traceability studies. Finally, volatile compounds corresponding to the predictors retained were identified by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) for a chemical interpretation of their importance in quality virgin olive oils.