NMR Analysis of aldehydes in sicilian extra-virgin olive oils by DPFGSE techniques

The DPFGSE NMR sequences open new perspectives in the volatile compounds analysis of food matrices. Many fresh extra-virgin Sicilian olive oils, analyzed by this technique, show two main resonances in the aldehydic spectral region (9 - 10 ppm), at 9.18 and 9.58 ppm. The former was never reported so far, the latter was sometime highlighted as a minor aldehydic component signal of spectra showing stronger resonances at 9.45 and 9.70 ppm. Thermal treatment at 220°C of extra virgin olive oil samples lead to the complete transformation of the resonances at 9.18 and 9.58 ppm into those at 9.45 and 9.70 ppm in 50 minutes. Analogous transformation takes place place in CDCl3 at rt in several weeks. These results suggest the transformation of relatively unstable compounds into thermodynamically more stable products whose resonances are commonly reported in the literature. Even though these chemical changes involve minimal amount of product, they are of crucial importance to define: i) organoleptic extra virgin olive oil properties; ii) fraudulent chemical or thermal treatment detection; iii) extra virgin oil ageing.