Published in Scientific Papers. Series B, Horticulture, Volume LX
Written by Hakan CETINKAYA, Muhittin KULAK
Olive tree is a typical Mediterranean plant grown in Marmara, Aegean, Mediterranean and South East Anatolian regions of Turkey and important oil sources for Mediterranean countries, fulfilling 90 % of the world olive oil production. Turkey is one of the important producer and stakeholders of olive oils after Spain, Italy, Greece and Tunisia. Cultivated olive cultivars in Turkey represent high genetic diversity, which may result in a standardization problem in terms of olive production and their fatty acid composition because the constituents of the fruit and the composition of its oil mainly depend on several factors such as climate, maturity, index variety, etc. Hence, the present study was designed to investigate the optimal soil characteristics for the favourable oil quality. In the study, the olive oils from South-Eastern region in Turkey according to their fatty acid profiles using gas chromatography of their fatty acid methyl esters were characterized and compared using chemo-metrics techniques. In this context, fatty acid profiles characterization was determined on ten olive samples collected from ten different locations. For the statistical evaluation, principal component analysis, variance analysis and correlation analysis were used. Accordingly, physical properties of soils influence the chemical composition and subsequently the quality of olive oils.
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