A critical review on analytical techniques to detect adulteration of extra virgin olive oil

Background Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is acknowledged as a liquid gold. It is cherished for its unique aroma, flavour and health benefits. Due to its high demand and high cost, fraudsters deliberately blend low-cost poor quality edible oil with EVOO to get economic benefits. The consumption of adulterated EVOO leads to health and safety issue of consumers. Thus, the rapid, precise, accurate and up-to-date analytical methods are the prerequisite to detect EVOO adulteration. Scope and approach Various official chemical methods are available for the detection of common adulterants in EVOO. However, these procedures are laborious, time-consuming, employ toxic chemicals and expect sample preparation before analysis. Thus, researchers are extensively exploring rapid, precise and green analytical methods to detect and quantify adulteration in EVOO and the present review is focused on summarizing these analytical methods developed in the past few years. Key findings and conclusion Several techniques, such as chromatographic, spectroscopic, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), DNA analysis and digital imaging have been employed in this field. The chromatographic techniques are reported to be time-consuming, whereas chemometric analysis is required for data interpretation of vibrational spectroscopic techniques, while, DSC is observed to be a qualitative technique. However, DNA analysis was found to be an efficient technique to detect adulterants in EVOO. The currently used officially methods should be upgraded as they are reported to be less sensitive compared to the latest methods.