Characterisation of table olive cultivar by NIR spectroscopy

NIR spectroscopy is proposed as a rapid and effective analytical method for the identification of the cultivar of table olives. The study was particularly focused on the Taggiasca cultivar. A set of 46 samples representative of the Taggiasca production area was analysed together with 43 samples of table olives of different cultivars. After feature selection, LDA and SIMCA were applied to the NIR data as classification and class-modelling techniques, respectively. The excellent results obtained by NIR spectroscopy (mean specificity of the models 82.0%, sensibility >90%) were then compared to those obtained by the gas chromatographic (GC) determination of the fatty acids composition of the oils extracted from the samples of table olives. Finally, in order to test the potential synergy among different sources of information, the employed NIR and chemical variables were joined, but only a small improvement of the results obtained by NIR alone was reached.