On the determination of the waxes in extra virgin olive oil of the Arbequina variety produced in Argentina

The compositional anomalies of virgin olive oils that have come to light in recent years have been "legalized" by the introduction of decision trees that allow only one anomaly in the presence of other more restrictive parameters that guarantee the authenticity. As for oils produced in Argentina the reported compositional anomalies are unfortunately more than one: campesterol, p-sitosterol apparent, palmitic, palmitoleic, oleic, linoleic, lignoceric acids, Delta ECN42, 2 glyceryl monopalmitate and waxes. With regard to these last ones, actually it is not an anomaly but the inability that many laboratories have to separate the waxes from the diterpene esters that can coelute. An attempt to remedy was made by eliminating some coeluting components like C 40 waxes, reducing the problem but not eliminating it. With this work we have experimented an alternative way to by-pass the problem of Arbeguina Argentina. The waxy fractions of 7 oils from Arbeguina were saponified and the aliphatic alcohols were determined. The results obtained oscillating between 40 and 80 mg/kg allow predicting 140 mg/Kg as a maximum content of waxes that excludes the presence of extraction oils, which is the ultimate goal the wax method, by by-passing effectively the actual compositional anomaly.