Chromatography-MS based metabolomics applied to the study of virgin olive oil bioactive compounds: Characterization studies, agro-technological investigations and assessment of healthy properties

The potential health benefits of virgin olive oil (VOO) are incontestable and, thus, its consumption and production is spreading all over the world. Among all VOO components, triterpenic and phenolic compounds, tocopherols and phytosterols attract a lot of attention; their determination is analytically challenging but the development of innovative, ambitious, robust, efficient and sensitive analytical methodologies can help obtaining valuable information about them. Chromatography-mass spectrometry (C-MS)-based Metabolomics is a key tool nowadays with great potential in many analytical fields and has proved to be capable of facing some important challenges related to VOO study. This contribution will try to: identify the main application fields on VOO Metabolomics, give an overall view of the general workflow, describe single-class and multi-class analytical approaches to determine those minor compounds cited above, and gather illustrative examples of C-MS metabolomic applications on VOO bioactive substances. The contribution will logically conclude by defining the key messages and pinpointing the future trends or needs of the olive oil production sector. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Metabolomics of virgin olive oil is an important tool for determining minor compounds and providing valuable information for olive oil production.