This paper (purchase required, free to IFST members) reports a quick, non-destructive technique to add to the panel of analytical tools needed to detect olive oil adulteration or mis-labelling. This test is to detect addition of sunflower, rapeseed or corn oils. It is based on electrochemical examination of the peak of alpha-tocopherol oxidation on a pencil graphite electrode (PGE). There is no sample pre-treatment needed. The authors prepared in-house oil mixes and were able to confidently discriminate “adulterated” samples at around 10% added non-olive oil. The method's relative standard deviation (RSD) was 20%, and the α-tocopherol in cold pressed olive oil cut-off value was 30.98 ± 12.57 nA. The authors believe this is the first publication on utilisation of voltammetric techniques for the detection of olive oil adulteration using a PGE.
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