An Overview of the Authentication of Olive Tree and Oil

Adulteration of virgin olive oil with less expensive oils is a serious problem for the public and quality control evaluators of olive oil. That is why olive oil authenticity has become a major issue for producers, consumers, and policy makers. In order to avoid fraud to consumers, it is crucial to study the traceability of olive oil. This review covers 2 important techniques, analytical, and molecular methods, used to characterize olive oil and detect possible adulteration. Several analytical techniques are discussed for the detection of olive oil adulteration by analyzing minor and major compounds of olive oil. However, the chemical composition of olive oil can dramatically change due to the environmental and processing conditions. For this reason, the DNA-based technologies are gaining greater attention now because they are not influenced by environmental conditions and provide an opportunity for direct comparison of different genetic materials. In this review, we emphasize the great potential of different authenticity methods and discuss their practical implementation in olive oil traceability.