engleski

The representativeness and shelf-life of the newly-designed artificial reference materials for rancid and winey/vinegary defects in virgin olive oils

The Panel Test method for the organoleptic assessment of virgin olive oils classifies oils into quality categories on the basis of the intensity of predominant defect and fruity attribute. The setting up of artificial and reproducible reference materials (RMs) is one of the objectives of the OLEUM project in order to increase the proficiency of the sensory panels involved in the Panel Test. In this context, two new RMs, for the aroma of winey-vinegary and rancid defects, have been formulated by adding specific volatiles responsible for negative sensory attributes to the refined olive oil. In this study, newly-designed artificial RMs were assessed by six panels to evaluate their i) representativeness, ii) panel detection thresholds, and iii) shelf-life after 3 and 6 months of storage. Both of the tested RMs were considered representative of the related defects. The panels’ detection threshold for the winey-vinegary and rancid defect corresponded to a perceived intensity between 0.3 and 1.0, and 0.3 and 1.1, respectively. Considering the shelf life, there were no significant differences in the evaluation of winey-vinegary RM during the storage, although, in the case of rancid RM, there was a clear intensity increase with time. The utilization of artificial RMs could improve the method effectiveness by offering advantages such as reproducibility and unlimited availability.

aroma ; OLEUM project ; organoleptic assessment ; panel test ; quality categories

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