Analytica Chimica Acta 595 (2007) 136–144 Geographic origins and compositions of virgin olive oils determinated by chemometric analysis of NIR spectra O. Galtier a,∗ , N. Dupuy a , Y. Le Dr´ eau a , D. Ollivier b , C. Pinatel c , J. Kister a , J. Artaud d a Laboratoire GOAE, Universit´ e Paul C´ ezanne, UMR CNRS 6171, case 451, 13397 Marseille Cedex 20, France b Laboratoire de Marseille, Direction G´ en´ erale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la R´ epression des Fraudes, 146 traverse Charles-Susini, 13388 Marseille Cedex 13, France c Association Fran¸ caise Interprofessionnelle de l’Olive, (AFIDOL), Maison des Agriculteurs, 22 avenue Henri-Pontier, 13626 Aix-en-Provence Cedex, France d Laboratoire de Chimie Analytique de l’Environnement, Universit´ e Paul C´ ezanne, UMR CNRS 6171, IFR PMSE 112, BP80, 13345 Aix-en-Provence, France Received 10 October 2006; received in revised form 22 December 2006; accepted 14 February 2007 Available online 20 February 2007 Abstract The authentication of virgin olive oil samples requires usually the use of sophisticated and time consuming analytical techniques. There is a need for fast and simple analytical techniques for the objective of a quality control methodology. Virgin olive oils present characteristic NIR spectra. Chemometric treatment of NIR spectra was assessed for the quantification of fatty acids and triacylglycerols in virgin olive oil samples (n = 125) and for their classification (PLS1-DA) into five very geographically closed registered designations of origin (RDOs) of French virgin olive oils (“Aix-en-Provence”, “Haute-Provence”, “Nice”, “Nyons” and “Vall´ ee des Baux”). The spectroscopic interpretation of regression vectors showed that each RDO was correlated to one or two specific components of virgin olive oils according to their cultivar compositions. The results were quite satisfactory, in spite of the similarity of cultivar compositions between two denominations of origin (“Aix-en-Provence” and “Vall´ ee des Baux”). Chemometric treatments of NIR spectra allow us to obtain similar results than those obtained by time consuming analytical techniques such as GC and HPLC, and constitute a help fast and robust for authentication of those French virgin olive oils. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Virgin olive oil; Near infrared; Partial least square discriminant analysis; Chemometric; Traceability 1. Introduction Nowadays, one of the major problems in the agricultural–food industry is to set down objective tools in order to determine the origin of raw materials as well as fin- ished products in order to ensure their traceability. Virgin olive oils come from very many olive varieties which are generally related to a soil that confers specific sensory [1] and chemical properties. In order to produce high qualities of virgin olive oils and to identify clearly those oils, the European community creates some quality-labels such as the registered designation of origin (RDO), which controls all the production. The French ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 491289036; fax: +33 491636509. E-mail address: oswin.galtier@univ-cezanne.fr (O. Galtier). production concerns seven RDOs (“Aix-en-Provence”, “Corse”, “Haute-Provence”, “Nice”, “Nˆ ımes”, “Nyons” and “Vall´ ee des Baux”). The virgin olive oil is one of the more expensive vegetable oils. Moreover, the price of virgin olive oils varied in large proportion (1 to 10). Because of high cost, notably with the RDO label, virgin olive oils could be the subject of fraudulent practices which consist of mixing them with various amounts of seed oils, refined olive oils at low cost or olive pomace oils. The search for the origin and the authenticity of olive oils has been the object of numerous studies in the past few years using the extremely varied physical-chemical determinations that are associated with a chemometric treatment. The stud- ies could be classified in two main categories. In the first category, the samples are chemically treated in order to deter- minate the composition in different constituents: fatty acids and triacylglycerols [2–4], sterols [5] and aroma [6,7]. The second 0003-2670/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.aca.2007.02.033