Characterization of virgin olive oils according to its triglycerides and sterols composition by chemometric methods

Principal component analysis (PCA), and soft independent modelling class analogy (SIMCA), were applied to data of content of the various triglycerides, sterols, or both data, to explore their capacity for the typification of a variety of olive oil, belonging to a Spanish origin denomination. This study has demonstrated that it is possible to characterize the oils obtained from a specific type of olives (“Manzanilla Cacereña” of North of Cáceres (Extremadura--Spain)) according to their chemical composition. Best results were obtained with the content of triglycerides. The plots of PCs showed that the PC1 is related with the category variable “variety” and the PC2 is related with “maturity”. SIMCA was employed to assign unknown samples into one of two groups or classes, depending on the “variety” of olives, for those which independent PCA models were made. Comman's plot showed that different olive oils are clustered in different groups and each group could be distinguished clearly.