Predict region for Italian olive oil based on its chemical composition
Heather Geiger
February 19, 2018
Why use this app?
- Olive oil fraud is common.
- But there's a solution! Olive oils from different regions have different chemical compositions.
- If the chemical composition matches what region the olive oil is supposed to be from, you can be more confident that the origin information on the bottle is the truth.
Limitations and future directions
- Currently the app only supports Italian olive oil.
- The app is also based only on chemical composition information from Italian olive oil. So if your oil is a non-Italian oil masquerading as Italian, it may be hard to tell what exactly is going on just from this app.
Chemical composition vs. regions for Italian olive oil
Conclusions
- We saw on the plot that chemical composition (eicosenoic and linoleic fatty acid percentages) clearly separated the olive oils from the different regions.
- So if you know these values, you can tell pretty clearly what region your olive oil is from.
- This app is a quick way to check your values against the known chemical composition of olive oils from the different regions.
