Evaluation of different storage conditions of extra virgin olive oils with an innovative recognition tool built by means of electronic nose and electronic tongue

In the present work, the oxidation of extra virgin olive oils was considered at different storage periods and conditions. The oxidation is usually evaluated by applying an accelerated thermoxidation, while in this case real storage conditions were used. In order to study the differences of the storage situations, multivariate statistical analysis was applied on classical chemical determinations, electronic nose and electronic tongue responses. Results showed how the electronic nose was enough to define the extra virgin olive oil oxidation and appeared to be able to describe the different storage conditions, while classical chemical parameters and electronic tongue were not relevant. In fact, the classification model built by means of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) gave an equal classification performance by considering all the variables or just the electronic nose sensor responses. Compared to classical methods, this new approach could represent an alternative and innovative tool for faster and cheaper evaluation of extra virgin oil oxidation. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.