Classification of ‘Chemlali’ accessions according to the geographical area using chemometric methods of phenolic profiles analysed by HPLC–ESI-TOF–MS

The present work describes a classification method of Tunisian ‘Chemlali’ olive oils based on their phenolic composition and geographical area. For this purpose, the data obtained by HPLC–ESI-TOF–MS from 13 samples of extra virgin olive oils, obtained from different production area throughout the country, were used for this study focusing in 23 phenolics compounds detected. The quantitative results showed a significant variability among the analysed oil samples. Factor analysis method using principal component was applied to the data in order to reduce the number of factors which explain the variability of the selected compounds. The data matrix constructed was subjected to a canonical discriminant analysis (CDA) in order to classify the oil samples. These results showed that 100% of cross-validated original group cases were correctly classified, which proves the usefulness of the selected variables.