Electrochemical sensor-based devices for assessing bioactive compounds in olive oils: a brief review

Electrochemical bioinspired sensor devices combined with chemometric tools have experienced great advances in the last years, being extensively used for food qualitative and quantitative evaluation, namely for olive oil analysis. Olive oil plays a key role in the Mediterranean diet, possessing unique and recognized nutritional and health properties as well as highly appreciated organoleptic characteristics. These positive attributes are mainly due to olive oil richness in bioactive compounds such as phenolic compounds. In addition, these compounds enhance their overall sensory quality, being mainly responsible for the usual olive oil pungency and bitterness. This review aims to compile and discuss the main research advances reported in the literature regarding the use of electrochemical sensor based-devices for assessing bioactive compounds in olive oil. The main advantages and limitations of these fast, accurate, bioinspired voltammetric, potentiometric and/or amperometric sensor green-approaches will be addressed, aiming to establish the future challenges for becoming a practical quality analytical tool for industrial and commercial applications.This research was funded by Project POCI-01–0145-FEDER-006984–Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM, Project UID/BIO/04469/2013–CEB, Project UID/QUI/50006/2013–REQUIMTE-LAQV and strategic project PEst-OE/AGR/UI0690/2014–CIMO all funded by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through COMPETE2020–Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI)–and by national funds through FCT–Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia I.P. Ítala G. Marx also acknowledges the research grant provided by Project UID/EQU/50020/2013 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006984. The APC was kindly waived by MDPI.