Sustainable palm oil fingerprinting: Uses in authentication

Palm oil production has increased in the past years as a result of an increased demand. Oil palms are cultivated in tropical regions, thus, this has raised sustainability concerns. The RSPO has established criteria for certification of sustainable palm oils, in order to protect its producers and inform the consumers. From this perspective, analytical tools for verification of sustainable palm oil are, in addition to paper trailing, of great value. The natural variability (biological and technological factors) of fats and oil turns their authentication into a challenge, as the composition of an authentic fat might vary within ranges. In this scenario, fingerprinting techniques together with chemometrics are promising for oil authentication. With them, models for the verification of a product's authenticity can be developed using data about the composition of a wide range of compounds. In this study, we developed models for the verification of the geographical origin of palm oil, since this might also link in with the production of sustainable palm oil in certain regions. Samples from Malaysia, Indonesia, West Africa, and South America were subjected to fingerprint analysis in the present study. Classification models according to the geographical origin have been developed using the volatile profile fingerprint (by Proton Transfer Reaction - Mass Spectrometry, PTR-MS) of palm oil. Correct classification rates were assessed by leave-10%-out cross-validation. The geographical origin of palm oils was correctly predicted by the model based on the volatile profiles. The present study shows that PTR-MS is a promising, rapid, non sample preparation requiring technique for verifying the geographical origin of palm oil.