Discrimination of five Tunisian cultivars by Mid InfraRed spectroscopy combined with chemometric analyses of olive Olea europaea leaves

The high biodiversity of olive tree and the economic needs require tools for the correct classification and identification of the different cultivars. Simple and rapid methods are in increasing demand. In the present work, FT-MIR spectroscopy associated to chemometric treatment is proposed as a direct and rapid tool to discriminate cultivars according to their olive leaves, a persistent tissue the whole year. A set of 75 samples of olive leaves representative of five Tunisian cultivars (Chemlali, Sayali, Meski, Zarrazi and Chétoui) cultivated in the same geographical area was analysed. Discrimination between the five Tunisian cultivars was performed by the chemometric approach, principal component analysis (PCA), based on the FT-MIR spectral data provided by olive leaves. Furthermore, a correct classification (100%) of the five Tunisian cultivars was obtained by the Partial Least Square Discriminate Analysis (PLS-DA) method.