A Comparative Study Concerned with Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC) and Fatty Acid Profile Methods to Detect the Adulteration of Sunflower Seed Oil in Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Extra virgin olive oil represents the popular source of oil in the Mediterrian countries. The price of extra virgin olive oil is increasing rapidly in the world market, due to many factors namely special organoleptic and health attributes. Therefore this popular oil might be subjected to adulteration. In this research, the application of Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC) and fatty acid profile methods to detect the adulteration of sunflower seed oil in extra virgin olive oil has been studied.
Refined sunflower seed oil was added to extra virgin olive oil at different portions (5, 10, 15 and 20 percent) and the thermal analysis of the samples were performed using DSC and the fatty acid composition of the samples were determined by GC apparatus.
The results of the thermal analysis showed that the addition of sunflower seed oil created significant changes in cooling and heating thermograms of DSC. The enthalpy, onset and maximum temperature of major crystallization peak for at least 10% adulteration and the enthalpy and maximum temperature of minor melting peak for 5% adulteration indicated significant differences as compared to the extra virgin olive oil (P The DSC method might be evaluated as a valuable method to detect the adulteration of refined sunflower seed oil in extra virgin olive oil however this method has its limitations regarding the percent of added oil.