**6. Conclusions**

216 Olive Germplasm – The Olive Cultivation, Table Olive and Olive Oil Industry in Italy

fact requested particularly in USA and Asiatic markets.

In olive oil packaging labelling is distinguished in:

It is obligatory to indicate on the label:

Commercial and sale denomination of oil

Production or packaging plant location

Other facultative indications as:

on food products.

olives and only by mechanical extraction"

Product volume (e.g. 0,75 L followed by symbol)

area of olive oils.

regulations

Packaging batch

Council method described in XII attachment of Reg. 2568/91/CE (Official Journal European Union, 1991) and revisions. The Regulation 182/2009/CE is a sort of Italian victory that can let acknowledge in a Communitarian regulation the possibility to indicate the production

The question of mixing of olive oil with other vegetable oils is also well defined in the new Regulation that establishes that member States can ban in the territory the production of mix for internal consumption. Instead, they cannot prohibit on the territory the sale of mixes produced by other States and ban the mix production for the commercialization in another member State or the exportation. This regulation stopped an age-old argument in which Italian farms were penalized in particular in not Communitarian markets where did not compete at par with other member States for offer of oil mixtures. This product type is in



 Oil category according to Reg. 1019/02/CE art. 3 (Official Journal European Union, 2002). For extra virgin olive oil: "Olive oil of superior category obtained directly by

Preferred consume date (as consume preferably up to the end….month and year)

 "First cold-pressing" and "cold-pressed" are reserved to virgin oils obtained by extractions not above 27° C. To guarantee the truth of their declaration, olive farm owners could indicate the installed techniques for each stock of processed olives.

 Acidity could be reported only if accompanied by peroxides value, waxes content and spectrophotometrical values ( K232, K270, Delta K ). Values can be followed

 Polyphenol content only for olive oil that contains almost 5 mg of hydroxytirosol and its derivatives per 20 g of olive oil. This indication must be accompanied by information to the consumer that the beneficial effect is obtained after a daily consumption of 20 g of olive oil. This last parameter has been fixed by a recent Regulation (Official Journal European Union, 2012) on allowed healthy information

The term "extracted" could be substituted by "obtained" or "produced"

Storage conditions (keep in a dry environment away from light and heat)

Recommendation "after using not disperse into environment"

by the phrase "maximum values at packaging"

Olive oil storage and packaging are final steps of the production process and are as important as the other ones. Deterioration agents can decrease the quality of this important food also during these unit operations, so a correct control and monitoring of some indicators can be useful to the olive oil shelf life. Storage environment and its characteristics (temperature most of all) contribute to it.

Packaging typologies also influence the stored olive oil properties with different results depending on materials. During the time various containers were adopted and evaluated with evident feedback for qualitative aspects (some material have been in fact banned for healthy causes). Moreover, the traditional uses can give to different preferences (e.g. in Italy is very difficult to substitute the glass apart from its ascertained value as packaging material for olive oil).

Future developments are surely expected because of many attentions on this subject also by scientific community and probably some materials will be improved and other container types will be proposed in a more and more advanced food market.
