Over the last decades, olive oil quality and authenticity control has become an issue of great importance to consumers, suppliers, retailers, and regulators in both traditional and emerging olive oil producing countries, mainly due to the increasing worldwide popularity and the trade globalization of this product. Thus, in order to ensure olive oil authentication, various national and international laws and regulations have been adopted, although some of them are actually causing an enormous debate about the risk that they can represent for the harmonization of international olive oil trade standards. Within this context, this review was designed to provide a critical overview and comparative analysis of selected regulatory frameworks for olive oil authentication, with special emphasis on the quality and purity criteria considered by these regulation systems, their thresholds and the analytical methods employed for monitoring them. To complete the general overview, recent analytical advances to overcome drawbacks and limitations of the official methods to evaluate olive oil quality and to determine possible adulterations were reviewed. Furthermore, the latest trends on analytical approaches to assess the olive oil geographical and varietal origin traceability were also examined.

We have developed a liquid-chromatographic method using atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI)-mass spectrometry (MS) detection in positive mode. This method was used to separate and identify 15 sterols and 2 dihydroxy triterpenes in saponified oils, enabling the analysis of these compounds directly from saponified samples without recourse to thin-layer chromatography; this fact thus significantly simplifies the process. The analyses were made using a Waters Atlantis 5 mm dC 18 15062.1 mm column with a gradient of acetonitrile/water (0.01% acetic acid) at a flow rate of 0.5 mL/min and a column temperature of 30 7C. The quantification of several of these compounds in soybean oil, palm oil, seed oil, sunflower oil, olive-pomace oil and virgin olive oil was carried out using their commercial standards, and the results were compared satisfactorily with the official method.

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The phenolic fraction of monovarietal virgin olive oils (VOOs) from the main Moroccan cultivar Picholine marocaine (142 samples from three different subareas of the Meknès region) was studied over three consecutive crop seasons (2011, 2012, and 2013) using a powerful LC-MS methodology. First, LC-ESI-TOF MS was used to get a comprehensive characterization of the phenolic fraction; afterward, LC-ESI-IT MS was utilized for further identification (MS/MS experiments) and quantitation purposes. A total of 28 phenolic compounds (and quinic acid) were determined, revealing the complex profile of Meknès VOO, composed, in order of abundance, by secoiridoids, phenolic alcohols, lignans, flavonoids, and phenolic acids. Tukey's test was applied to ascertain possible significant intraregional and/or interannual variations of the phenolic content of the Meknès VOOs under study. Results showed that the content of phenolic compounds was mainly related to the crop season.

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