Near-Infrared (NIR) Spectrometry as a Fast and Reliable Tool for Fat and Moisture Analyses in Olives

The evaluation of fat and moisture contents for olive fruits is crucial for both olive growers and olive oil processors. Reference methods, such as Soxhlet extraction, used for fat content determination in olive fruits are time- and solvent- consuming and labor intensive. Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is proposed as a solution toward rapid and nondestructive analyses of olive fruit fat and moisture contents. In the present work, comparative studies of the fat and moisture quantification methods were performed on four cultivars (Arbosana, Arbequina, Chiquitita, and Koroneiki) during six different harvesting time points to determine the potential of NIR as an alternative methodology. The impact of olive paste crushing degree on NIR performance was also investigated using three different grid sizes (4, 6, and 8 mm) on a hammer mill, in addition to a blade crusher. Results indicate a satisfactory correlation between the reference Soxhlet and NIR methods with R ² = 0.995. A comparison study of moisture content was also done on NIR and the use of conventional oven with the R ² value of 0.995. The crushing blade produced higher values in both moisture and fat contents in comparison to the hammer mill. The evaluation indicates that when building a chemometric model, all crush sizes and blade sizes should be represented in the model for highest accuracy.