Influence of ripe table olive processing on oil characteristics and composition as determined by chemometrics.

The changes in ripe olive fat produced by processing were studied according to cultivars using the general linear model, principal component analysis (PCA), predictive discriminant analysis (DA), and hierarchical clustering. Acidity, peroxide value, K(270), and DeltaK increased during storage. Acidity also increased after sterilization, whereas K(270) decreased after darkening; K(232) showed a progressive decrease during processing. Fatty acids (except C17:0, C18:0, and C24:0), triacylglycerols (except PLLn, OOLn+PoOL, PLL+PoPoO, SOO, and POS+SLS), polar compounds, diacylglycerol, and monoacylglycerols also suffered statistically significant changes during processing. A PCA discriminated between cultivars and, within the same cultivar, among the raw materials from the rest of the treatments. Using fatty acid and triacylglycerol compositions, predictive DA discriminated between cultivars (100% correct), but high discriminant capacity among processing steps (95% correct assignation and 87% in cross-validation) was achieved only with fatty acids. A hierarchical clustering analysis successfully grouped cultivars and processing steps according to overall olive oil composition and quality.