Ramiro Sánchez, Fernando Díaz, Lina Viviana Melo Niño
Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) can degrade during production or storage to virgin olive oil (VOO) or lampante olive oil (LOO). Fraud can also occur during commercialisation through the adulteration of EVOO (Ad-EVOO) with cheaper sunflower oil (SFO). Therefore, rapid screening techniques for quality control are needed. We evaluated an electronic nose (EN) with chemometrics—linear discriminant analysis (LDA), artificial neural-network discriminant analysis (ANN-DA), and partial least-squares regression (PLS)—in two scenarios: (i) classification into four classes (EVOO, VOO, LOO, and Ad-EVOO adulterated with 25% w/w SFO); and (ii) Ad-EVOO series containing 5–40% w/w SFO. Classes were corroborated by HS-SPME-GC-MS, with elevated (E)-2-hexenal and 3-hexen-1-ol in EVOO and increases in nonanal, ethyl acetate, and 2-propanol in deteriorated oils. Using the EN, LDA separated the classes, and ANN-DA achieved 90% accuracy under cross-validation, with the greatest confusion between VOO and LOO. In adulteration, discrimination emerged from 20% SFO, and PLS estimated %Ad-EVOO with R2pred = 0.972 (RMSEC/RMSEP = 8.059/5.627). In conclusion, the EN provides objective, rapid, and non-destructive screening that supports sensory panels and chromatographic analyses during reception and storage in industrial settings.