Monitoring olive oils oxidative stability and quality parameters (free acidity, peroxide values, K232 and
K270 extinction coefficients) is needed to guarantee that, during storage, their levels remain within the
legal thresholds enabling their commercialization as high-value extra-virgin olive oils. Physicochemical
levels are assessed using time-consuming routine analytical reference techniques. In this work, the
feasibility of a novel approach that merges an electronic tongue and chemometric tools, for monitoring
extra-virgin olive oils’ quality along one year of storage at dark or exposed to light is discussed. The
results confirmed that physicochemical parameters varied with the storage lighting conditions and more
significantly with time. Also, multiple linear regression models, using sub-sets of 22e28 sensors selected
with a meta-heuristic simulated annealing algorithm, allow evaluating the storage time-evolution of
olive oils’ peroxide values, extinction coefficients and oxidative stabilities with satisfactory accuracy
(R2 0.98 and 0.96, for leave-one-out and repeated K-fold cross-validation procedures, respectively).
The capability of monitoring, in a single electrochemical assay, legal required quality parameters of olive
oils, decreases considerable the analysis time and cost, allowing checking the compliance of extra-virgin
olive oil quality with labeling. So, the use of electronic tongues for extra-virgin olive oil shelf-life
assessment could be envisaged.
