Virgin olive oil blueprint? As the analytical platform could enhance the fingerprinting sensitivities and effectiveness of sample classification

Volatile compounds play a crucial role in defining sensory quality of olive oil and strong efforts have been made to unravel the composition of this informative fraction as well as to understand correlations with quality attributes [1]. In this context food fingerprint can provide a comprehensive information on chemical composition, quality and authenticity giving a peculiar ???blueprint??? of a food. Two-dimensional comprehensive gas chromatography (GC×GC) coupled to mass spectrometry (MS) improves fingerprinting effectiveness thanks to its ability (a) to increase the separation power, (b) to order analytes through logic chemical structures over the chromatographic plane and (c) to enhance detection sensitivity. The potentials of GCxGC-MS coupled with HS-SPME sampling have here been evaluated on the basis of a previous study [1], where the most informative compounds, present in the ???blueprint??? of specific defects (or their combination) were adopted to discriminate and classify Extra Virgin Oil (EVO) and lampante oil [2]. In order to improve the informative potential of the analytical procedure useful for fingerprinting different sampling approaches focused on the potential of a group of High Concentration Capacity Headspace (HCC) and Dynamic HS techniques and treated as a further dimension of the analytical platform for sensomics. HCC Headspace have shown to be highly effective because of the high concentration factors, providing highly representative profiles as well as analyte recoveries suitable for reliable quantitation (precision and accuracy) of potent odorants in sub-trace amounts. The possibility of extending the analytical investigation to a broader range of chemicals will also be discussed in view of the potentials offered by two dimensional comprehensive GC, that improves fingerprinting sensitivity and effectiveness of sample classification.