Extraction of Pigment Information from Near-UV Vis Absorption Spectra of Extra Virgin Olive Oils

This work reports a new approach to extract the maximum chemical information from the absorption spectrum of extra virgin olive oils (EVOOs) in the 390-720 nm spectral range, where "oil pigments" dominate the light absorption. Four most important pigments, i.e., two carotenoids (lutein and β-carotene) and two chlorophylls (pheophytin-a and pheophytin-b), are chosen as reference oil pigments, being present in all the reported analytical data regarding pigments of EVOOs. The method allows the quantification of the concentration values of these four pigments directly from the deconvolution of the measured absorption spectrum of EVOOs. Advantages and limits of the method and the reliability of the pigment family quantification are discussed. The main point of this work is the description of a fast and simple method to extract of such information in less than a minute, through the mathematical analysis of the UV-vis spectrum of untreated samples of oil.