Geographical origin impact on volatile composition and some quality parameters of virgin olive oils extracted from the “Ayvalık” variety

"Ayvalık" is one of the prominent olive cultivar used for producing virgin olive oil (VOO) in Turkey. In this study, 215 olive samples of "Ayvalık" were harvested from 14 different locations in North Aegean Region of Anatolia by hand-picking during three consecutive crop seasons. The early harvested cold press VOO samples were produced at lab-scale and the quality indices (free acidity, peroxide value and spectral absorption at 232, 266, 270 and 274 nm), induction time, colour values, fatty acid and volatile profiles were determined in order to examine changes on composition of the "Ayvalık" olive oils based on their growing area. Characteristically, it was found that volatile fraction of "Ayvalık" VOOs composed of aldehydes (29.72), terpene (12.68), alcohol (11.65), benzene ringed compound (4.71), ketone (3.49), organic acid (2.87), ester (1.84), furan (0.96) compounds on average percentage. It was highlighted with this research 61.84–87.36% of aldehydes, 0.00–91.11% of ketones, 0.00–46.11% of esters, and 34.53–92.06% of alcohols were generated only by lipoxygenase pathway. As a conclusion, Ayvalık VOOs had different chemical composition based on geographic origin. Therefore, it was considered that this work is so promising to directly accelerate that the number of geographic indicated VOOs linked to "Ayvalık" cultivar.