Soft-deodorization of virgin olive oil: Study of the changes of quality and chemical composition

- Defective virgin olive oils were soft-deodorized under different conditions.
- Soft-deodorized oils were analyzed to determine volatiles, phenols, ppps and faees.
- Optimized soft-deodorization (100 °C, 60 min) produced minor chemical changes.
- These results will help to detect soft-deodorized VOO in EVOO in further works.

The potential adulteration of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) with soft-deodorized virgin olive oil (VOO) has raised the interest of researchers in investigating this fraud in recent years. The objective of this study was to determine chemical changes occurring after a soft-deodorization process in terms of volatiles, fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEEs) and pyropheophytins (PPPs) concentrations in VOOs. After testing several conditions (80, 100 and 130 °C, for 30 and 60 min), the parameters of 100 °C and 60 min were considered as the optima. These conditions allowed removing volatiles responsible for sensory defects with low losses of total phenols (14%-32%), and values of PPPs (11.83%) and FAEEs (34.53 mg/kg) lower than the limits of standard regulations. The experiments show that soft-deodorized VOOs could be added up to 50% to EVOOs and current standard methods would not detect this kind of adulteration.