We are at the CAC2016: Chemometrics in Analytical Chemistry, that is take place in Barcelona, June 6th-10th, 2016.
We have presented a part of our results on the detection of virgin olive oil adulteration with other vegetable oils. This study belongs to our reserach line on Food characterization and authentication. 
The Olive Oil Universe is a workshop organized at the Torribera Food Campus by researchers from INSA-UB.
In this Workshop we will be presenting the results of our last project on Food authentication. The project (titled “Acylglycerol fingerprinting of olive oil for fraud prevention” and leaded by Stefania Vichi PhD and Alba Tres PhD) is a preliminary study to find analytical tools to detect olive oil adulteration with seed oils. It has been funded by the FRI-2013 program of the INSA-UB.
The aim of the FRI program is to foster young INSA-UB researchers and to promote the collaboration between different research groups of the Institute.
Within our research area on food authentication, we are conducting a research project to find new analytical tools to answer the question: Is it trully Bellota Iberian ham (from pigs fed acorns)? Food products with added-value are susceptible to fraud, so having tools to detect fraud reduces fraud possibilites increasing the protection of consumers.
This week, an article describing the firsts results of this project has been published:
Authentication of Iberian dry-cured ham: New approaches by polymorphic fingerprint and ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometryBayes L, Tres A, Vichi S, Calvet MT, Cuevas-Diarte MA, Codony R, Boatella J, Caixach J, Ueno, S, Guardiola F.
Food Control, 2016, 60: 370-377
DOI: 10.1016/j.foodcont.2015.07.047
The journal offers it for free until October 14th, 2015. Click here to get it!!
This work presents new approaches to detect food fraud. The work deals with the problem from a multidisciplinary point of view. Thus, several crystallographic and analytical methods rarely applied to food authentication were assayed. In addition, these techniques were combined with chemometrics, using in some cases the state-of-the-art chemometric strategy in food authentication, which relies on finding a pattern in the raw analytical signal characteristic of the authentic product (fingerprint).
As a model to assay these new techniques for food authentication, we used two categories of Iberian dry-cured ham (Cebo and Bellota). With this model, the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) thermograms of the lipid fraction provided fingerprints able to discriminate between both categories. Several crystallographic techniques (synchrotron radiation and laboratory-scale X-ray diffraction, and thermo-optical polarized microscopy) were used to characterize the crystallization, transformation and melting processes recorded by the DSC thermograms. The triacylglycerol composition determined by ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry (UHRMS) was also able to discriminate between both categories. Thus, these determinations, in combination with chemometrics, may prove extremely useful to authenticate many foods containing high to moderate amounts of lipids, such as foods of animal origin.
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