Influence of harvest method and period on olive oil composition: an NMR and statistical study.

The influence of harvest period and harvest method on olive oil composition was investigated by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and by some quality parameters such as free acidity, peroxide value, and UV spectrophotometric indices. This work focuses on two secondary factors (harvest period and harvest method) and investigated their interactions with primary (genetic and pedoclimatic) and secondary (agronomic practices and technological procedures) factors. To avoid misinterpretation, the general linear model analysis (GLM) was used to adjust the result obtained from the analysis of variance (ANOVA).

NMR and chemometrics in tracing European olive oils: the case study of Ligurian samples.

An NMR and chemometric analytical approach to classify extra virgin olive oils according to their geographical origin was developed within the European TRACE project (FP6-2003-FOOD-2-A, contract number: 0060942). Olive oils (896 samples) of three consecutive harvesting years (2005, 2006, and 2007) coming from Mediterranean areas were analyzed by (1)H NMR spectroscopy. Olive oil samples from Liguria, an Italian region, were chosen as a case study and PLS-DA and SIMCA modeling analyses were used to build up statistical models both to discriminate between Ligurian and non-Ligurian olive oils and to define the Ligurian olive oil class to confirm the declared provenience.

An integrated study for mapping the moisture distribution in an ancient damaged wall painting.

An integrated study of microclimate monitoring, IR thermography (IRT), gravimetric tests and portable unilateral nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) was applied in the framework of planning emergency intervention on a very deteriorated wall painting in San Rocco church, Cornaredo (Milan, Italy). The IRT investigation supported by gravimetric tests showed that the worst damage, due to water infiltration, was localized on the wall painting of the northern wall. Unilateral NMR, a new non-destructive technique which measures the hydrogen signal of the moisture and that was applied directly to the wall, allowed a detailed map of the distribution of the moisture in the plaster underlying the wall panting to be obtained.