Organised by the IOC in partnership with the Department of Food Science from the University of Udine and the Italian Society for Fat Research, known by its Italian acronym of SISSG, the first international workshop on sample preparation and chromatogram interpretation in olive oil quality and purity control took place in the Italian city of Udine from 26 to 30 May 2014. The workshop brought together 30 specialists from IOC-recognised laboratories who received practical and theoretical tutoring in the methods for the determination of waxes, stigmastadienes, alkyl esters, diacylglycerols and triacylglycerols as well as the global method for the detection of extraneous oils in olive oils. Participants, who were from 17 different countries, had the opportunity to pool their experience and put questions to the course leaders, Carlo Mariani and Wencesalo Moreda, who developed the methods.
The aim of the workshop was to address analysts’ needs when applying new olive oil testing methods. It was a great success and proved really interesting for all the participants, two good reasons for holding other similar IOC workshops featuring other methods of analysis
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