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Olive is a long-living perennial species with a wide geographical distribution, showing a large genetic and phenotypic variation in its growing area. There is an urgent need to uncover how olive phenotypic traits and plasticity can change regardless of the genetic background. A two-year study was conducted, based on the analysis of fruit and oil traits of 113 cultivars from five germplasm collections established in Mediterranean Basin countries and Argentina. Fruit and oil traits plasticity, broad‐sense heritability and genotype by environment interaction were estimated. From variance and heritability analyses, it was shown that fruit fresh weight was mainly under genetic control, whereas oleic/(palmitic + linoleic) acids ratio was regulated by the environment and genotype by environment interaction had the major effect on oil content. Among the studied cultivars, different level of stability was observed, which allowed ranking the cultivars based on their plasticity for oil traits. High thermal amplitude, the difference of low and high year values of temperature, negatively affected the oil content and the oleic acid percentage. Information derived from this work will help to direct the selection of cultivars with the highest global fitness averaged over the environments rather than the highest fitness in each environment separately.

Olive growing in Lebanon plays an important role at both a social and economic level. Nevertheless, the quality of olive oil produced in the country is rarely addressed. In this study, oil content, fatty acid, and phenolic profiles were studied along four different ripening stages for 11 varieties of olives, including two clones of the local variety “Baladi,” in addition to nine foreign varieties (“Ascolana Tenera,” “Bella di Cerignola,” “Itrana,” “Jabaa,” “Kalamata,” “Nabali,” “Salonenque,” “Sigoise,” and “Tanche”). Oil content was determined using the Soxhlet method and Abencor system. Fatty acid composition was determined using a GC-FID, total phenols using spectrophotometry, and the phenolic profile using HPLC-DAD. Results showed that variety, fruit ripening and their interaction have a significant effect on the overall studied oil parameters. Among the studied varieties, “Kalamata” presented the higher oil content on dry matter (OCDM = 48.24%), “Baladi 1” the highest oil content on humid matter (OCHM = 27.86%), and “Tanche” the highest oil industrial yield (OIY = 19.44%). While “Tanche” recorded the highest C18:1 (71.75%), “Ascolana Tenera” showed the highest total phenols (TP = 539 mg GAE/Kg of oil), “Salonenque” the highest oleacein (121.57 mg/Kg), and “Itrana” the highest oleocanthal contents (317.68 mg/Kg). On the other hand, oil content together with C18:2 and C18:0 increased along ripening while C18:1, total phenols and the main individual phenols decreased. Although preliminary, this study highlights the good quality of olive oil produced from both local and foreign varieties growing in Lebanon and encourages further investigations on the characterization and authentication of Lebanese olive oil.

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