Chemical and Molecular Characterization of Crude Oil Obtained by Olive-Pomace Recentrifugation

Abstract

In oil-mills, olive-pomace recentrifugation is a common way to reduce pomace moisture and, at the same time, to recover the oil therein. According to current rules, the obtained oil is defined as “crude olive-pomace oil.” The aim of this work is to verify the effect of recentrifugation on specific chemical and molecular parameters of the crude olive-pomace oil, by comparing it with the corresponding virgin olive oil obtained from the same olive lots. In particular, the following were considered: (i) the polar compounds of the oils that include compounds originated from oxidative and hydrolytic degradation, analyzed by high-performance size exclusion chromatography (HPSEC), and (ii) the profile of DNA microsatellite molecular markers that was analyzed by using the High Resolution Melting (HRM) technique. The obtained results evidenced the significantly higher hydrolytic degradation of crude olive-pomace oil, compared with the corresponding virgin olive oil, but at an extent unlikely able to allow the detection of fraudulent admixtures with virgin olive oils. In addition, the findings demonstrated the feasibility of the application of the HRM analysis of DNA microsatellites to crude olive-pomace oil, able to reveal the alteration of the declared varietal profile of a virgin olive oil sample by simply checking the HRM curve profiles.