Distribution of simple phenols, phenolic acids and flavonoids in Turkish monovarietal extra virgin olive oils for two harvest years

Monovarietal extra virgin olive oils extracted from six dominant and economically important Turkish olive cultivars (memecik, erkence, domat, nizip-yaglik, gemlik, ayvalik) were examined for their simple phenolics, phenolic acids and flavonoid compounds over 2005 and 2006 harvest years. Total phenol contents, oxidative stabilities and chromatic ordinates as colour parameters were also measured. The most typical phenolic compounds that were identified in both years are hydroxytyrosol, tyrosol, vanillic acid, p-coumaric acid, cinnamic acid, luteolin, and apigenin. Multivariate data were analysed by principal component and partial least square-discriminant analyses. It was observed that phenolic profiles of olive oils depended highly on harvest season. In addition, oils of different olive cultivars have different distribution of phenols. No significant correlation was observed between oxidative stability and phenolic compounds. Increase in peroxide value over an accelerated oxidation period of 11 days showed weak correlations with total phenol content, vanillin, syringic acid and colour parameter a∗, as 0.56, 0.55, −0.42, and 0.51, respectively, in terms of correlation coefficient r.