Metabolomic approach for Extra virgin olive oil origin discrimination making use of ultra-high performance liquid chromatography – Quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry

The fraudulent miss-description on food product labels regarding origin or composition is a widespread problem. In this work, a metabolomic approach based on the use of ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QTOF-MS) has been applied to identify the differentiating chemical markers that allow geographic origin discrimination between different Spanish Extra Virgin Olive Oils (EVOOs). For this purpose, ninety EVOOs from 6 Spanish regions were analyzed. Data processing consisted on peak picking, retention time alignment and response normalization. Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) and orthogonal PLS-DA (OPLS-DA) were applied to identify the most significant markers that allow groups separation. Twelve different compounds were found to correctly separate the EVOOs from their origin and 7 of them could be tentatively identified. The results of our work suggest that UHPLC-QTOF MS-based metabolomic analysis is a suitable approach for biomarker-detection in the food quality/safety field.