Targeted metabolic profiling of the revived ancient ‘Corbella’ olive cultivar during early maturation

‘Corbella’ is an ancient olive cultivar whose cultivation has recently been revived and hence little is known about its composition. This is the first work studying the metabolic profile of ‘Corbella’ olives during early maturation. Olives with a ripening index (RI) < 1 yielded considerably less oil content (<40%) but had more concentration of phenolic compounds (148.41–219.70 mg/kg), carotenoids (9.61–14.94 mg/kg) and squalene (521.41–624.40 mg/kg). Contrarily, the levels of α-tocopherol were higher at the RI of 1.08 and 1.96 (64.57 and 57.75 mg/kg, respectively). The most abundant phenolic compound was oleuropein aglycone (>50% of the phenolic composition), suggesting a high hydrolytic activity of β-glucosidase in the fruit. The antioxidant capacity was barely affected, while oleic/linoleic ratio reached its highest at RI of 1.96. Therefore, olives with an RI below 2 could be good candidates to produce high-quality olive oils with good level of stability.

This work was supported by CDTI [IDI-20210929] and Fundació Bosch-Gimpera [311463].

We acknowledge PID2020-114022RB-I00 and CIBEROBN from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, ISCIII from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, (AEI/FEDER, UE), Generalitat de Catalunya (GC) [2021-SGR-00334]. INSA-UB is Maria de Maeztu Unit of Excellence (grant CEX2021-001234-M funded by MICIN/AEI/FEDER, UE). Alexandra Olmo-Cunillera thanks the Ministry of Science Innovation and Universities for the FPU contract (FPU2018/03119). Mohamed M. Abuhabib is grateful for the predoctoral scholarship FI-SDUR (REU/551/2022) from the Agency of Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR), Generalitat de Catalunya. Antònia Ninot and Agustí Romero-Aroca acknowledge financial support from the CERCA Program of the Generalitat of Catalonia. Anna Vallverdu-Queralt thanks the Ministry of Science Innovation and Universities for the Ramón y Cajal contract [RYC-2016-19355]. We would also like to thank Oli Migjorn for their collaboration and supplying the ‘Corbella’ olives, and the Scientific and Technological services of the University of Barcelona (CCiT-UB) for the UPLC-MS/MS equipment.

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion