This review (open access) aims to provide an overview of the European regulation for PDO and PGI certified Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) including the synonyms and common misclassifications relating to the definition of different cultivars. The authors recommend Single Sequence Repeats (SSRs) as the best analytical marker to verify cultivars.and the main fraudulent practices in the olive oil sector. They have collated and published the marker SSRs for each protected culivar.
The authors conducted a deep check on the varieties used to produce the PDO and PGI EVOOs currently registered with the European Commission and they examined the publicly available SSR profiles for each variety in detail. All identified profiles have been collected and made available to the scientific community. They were able to highlight many synonymies (different names for the same variety) and homonymies (same name for different varieties), which should solve the confusion caused by the misnaming of olive varieties. Finally, the data collected were used to identify private alleles useful to identify the geographical origin of the olive varieties used in the oil production.
All the data and information collected here provide a useful and reliable tool for the varietal traceability and the authentication of the PDO and PGI EVOOs.
For an explanation of SSRs, see FAN’s analytical methods explainers for DNA techniques.
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