Oil quality evaluation of two olive cultivars ‘Tarom 2’and ‘Dezful’ in Ahvaz condition

Given that, the qualitative characteristics of olive oil are influenced by environmental conditions and cultivars. Therefore, this study was carried out to investigate some of the oil qualitative characteristics of Tarom 2 and Dezful cultivars of olive as a randomized complete block design with 3 replications at Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz during 2016-2017. The results indicated that, the oil extracted from Tarom 2 cultivar exhibited the highest peroxide value (9.25 meq of O2/ kg of oil), chlorophyll content (8.10 mg/kg of oil), and carotenoid (0.16 mg/kg of oil) and K232 and K270 extinction coefficients of 2.32 and 0.61, respectively. However, total phenolic content of the oil extracted from Dezful cultivar (552.66 mg/kg of oil) was higher than that of the other cultivar. In addition, the highest oleic acid content (58.52%) and lowest palmitic acid content (17.6%) were measured on the oil obtained from the Tarom 2 cultivar, while the oil extracted from Dezful cultivar showed the highest linoleic acid content (18.05%). Furthermore, oleic acid-to-linoleic acid ratio was higher in the oil extracted from the Tarom 2 cultivar rather than the one taken from the Dezful cultivar. Therefore, based on the results obtained from the experiment, the oil extracted from Tarom 2 cultivar is expected to exhibit higher oxidative stability than that of the Dezful cultivar.