Impact des conditions d’hygiène et de fabrication sur la dégradation de la qualité potentielle des huiles d’olive produites dans la zone de Moulay Driss Zerhoun

Abstract

Olive oil is very appreciated for its organoleptic characteristics and its biological and nutritional value. These characteristics are strongly bound to the quality which, itself, is influenced by several parameters such as the cultivar, the maturity of olives, the systems of oil extraction, etc. The objective of this work is to study the impact of the various stages of olive storage and oil extraction on the final quality of olive oil. Considering its historic anchoring, its high reputation and the importance of its production, Moulay Driss Zerhoun's virgin olive oil was chosen for the realization of this study. A sampling of olives from 20 olive orchards, scattered all over the rural communities of Moulay Driss Zerhoun, was made. The harvested olives were handled by two different methods for the oil extraction: the Abencor (laboratory) method and the systems of extraction adopted by olive mills (press, 2 and 3 phases systems). The obtained results show that there is a wide gap between the qualities of oil produced by both methods of extraction. Oil produced in the local mills does not reflect the big potential which offers the territory regarding quality, in particular the wealth in polyphenols; which are natural antioxidants. It was also shown that there is a significant difference between the extraction systems adopted by olive mills. The mode of olive storage impacts enormously on the physicochemical and organoleptic quality of the oil. Affording the pre requisite programs (good hygiene and manufacturing practices) turns out very important to improve the quality and obtain an extra virgin oil recognized not only at the national level, but also at the international scale and pretender to obtain a Protected Designation of Origin