Sterol and alcohol components of seed, pulp and whole olive fruit oils. Their use to characterise olive fruit variety by multivariates

Sterols, triterpene dialcohols, long-chain aliphatic alcohols and higher triterpene alcohols were determined in three fruit oil kinds (seed, pulp and whole fruit oils). Seven major Italian olive fruit varieties from the same environment were considered. Results of this research suggested that the compositional data concerning the above analytical fractions were effective in discriminating between seed and pulp oils. The seed oil fraction did not substantially modify the sterol and alcohol composition of the whole fruit oil (mixture of seed and pulp oils), the percentage weight of the seed (similar to2%) being far lower than that of the pulp (similar to85%) (whole fruit weight basis). Based on the concentrations of the above components and using appropriate statistical parametric or non-parametric multivariate techniques, the genetic origin (olive variety) of the three fruit oil kinds was characterised. (C) 2002 Society of Chemical Industry.