Traceability markers to the botanical origin in olive oils.

This review provides an overview of traceability studies performed to date (April 2009) for olive oils. Special emphasis has been made on the botanical origin because high-quality monovarietal olive oils have been recently introduced on the markets and their quality control requires the development of new and powerful analytical tools as well as new regulations to avoid fraud to consumers. Several parameters with discriminant power have been used for olive oil traceability according to the olive variety used in the production of the oil. They have been considered as traceability markers to the botanical origin and classified, in this work, as compositional and genetical markers.