Determination of trace element in Italian virgin olive oils and their characterization according to geographical origin by statistical analysis

Multi-element analysis of organic virgin olive oils from different Italian regions was carried out by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) aiming at developing a reliable method in the traceability of the origin of oils. The data were processed by means of the chemiometric approach of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) that allows classifying unknown samples after checking possible differentiation of samples of known origin.An external calibration curve was build for the quantitative analysis. The calibration curves for each element were linear in the range between 0.01 and 100 ng mL−1 and 0.2 to 2000 ng mL−1, the correlation coefficients were ranging between 0.996 and 0.999. Results from spike and recovery experiments at levels of 30 and 65 ng mL−1 were in the range of 91–119%, whereas the quantitation limits, based on 10 times standard deviation of the blank, were also in the range of 0.009–10.2 ng g−1, for almost all the elements.