Ricerc@Sapienza

Extra virgin olive oil, a key ingredient of Mediterranean Diet, was a widley investegated matrix. Olive oil is mainly composed of triacylglycerols (Ca. 98%); instead, polar lipids, in particular phospho, sulfo, and glycolipids is the minor component (2%) [1]. The aim of this work is to characterize and identify the olive oil polar lipid profile allowing to provide a chemical identity to olive oil and evaluate possible adulaterations [2]. The lipids extraction methods most widley used are Folch [3] or Bligh and Dyers [4], followed by clean-up or enrichment procedure. Firstly, the extra virgin olive oil samples will be subjected to pretreatment, prior to the analysis, by comparison of different liquid-liquid extractions and solid phase enrichment. Lipids will be extracted by using various solvent mixtures, for example hexane with ethanol, isopropanol, ethyl acetate to achieve greater polar lipids recovery. Finally, enrichment optimization methods will be optimized by applying a different SPE cartridges reported in literature [5,6,7]. Two solid phase extraction based on weak anion exchange (WAX) and griphitized carbon black (GCB) will be performed obtaining the best enrichment especially for lower aboundant polar lipids. Moreover, lipids identification will be performed with Lipostar, new comprehensive software for lidomic study. Being polar lipids profile in this matrix slightly characterized, but it represents an important target especially for the Mediterranean country economy, with this project could be characterized more exhaustively than the state of the art.