Olive fruits contain an n-alkane series of saturated hydrocarbons mainly in the pulp. Lower amounts of a complex mixture of paraffins, unresolved by gas chromatography (UCM--unresolved complex mixture), have been found in cuticle, stone (woody shell and seed), olive leaves, and talc used as an aid to olive oil extraction. The amounts of both kinds of hydrocarbons are related to the olive cultiv...

The Olive tree (Olea europaea L.), a native of the Mediterranean basin and parts of Asia, is now widely cultivated in many other parts of the world for production of olive oil and table olives. Olive is a rich source of valuable nutrients and bioactives of medicinal and therapeutic interest. Olive fruit contains appreciable concentration, 1-3% of fresh pulp weight, of hydrophilic (phenolic acid...

Biomaterials from olive tree pruning are an abundant agricultural residue in various Mediterranean regions. A suggested use of this residue is its separation in a main fraction (trunks and stems with diameter > 1 cm) and a residual fraction (leaves and stems with diameter 1 < cm), using biorefinery procedures. The main fraction is cooked with ethanol, giving rise to a pulp, which can be used ei...

Olive cake is a sub-product of the mechanical olive oil extraction industry, which consists of pit and pulp of the olive fruit, olive oil and vegetable water. It has been using for direct combustion in bakeries and olive oil mills due to its energy content. However, the initial moisture content of olive cake is approximately 44.78% ± 0.5 (wet basis), and this has to be reduced to about 5% to re...

this study was carried out on olive trees cv. amygdalifolia, to investigate the effect of spraying potassium nitrate, kno3, and zinc sulfate, znso4, on the fruit weight, dimension and volume. the plants were sprayed with 0, 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5% kno3 and 0, 0.25, 0.50 and 0.75% znso4 and their combinations in august about halfway through the fruit growth period. the highest fruit weight was observe...

The response of mature olive (Olea europaea L.) trees to both regulated deficit irrigation and fertigation was studied for some consecutive years in sub-humid (Italy) and semi-arid conditions (Spain). All cultivars tested in these experiments were preferentially for table olive consumption (pickling and double-aptitude). Data from these long-term studies on field-grown, mature trees are summari...

The evolution of modern technology for olive oil extraction has affected the industrial sector depending directly on the by-products obtained. The traditional three-phase continuous centrifugation process for olive oil extraction was introduced in the 1970s, notably to increase the processing capacity and extraction yield and to reduce labour. This three-phase manufacturing process of olive oil...

Table olives are a traditional component of the Mediterranean diet and are largely consumed in the world. There are different trade treatments that originate different types of olives. The aim of the present work was to proceed to the microbiological characterization of table olives commercialized in the Portuguese market, with respect to their microbiological safety. The microbiological charac...

Anthocyanins (Anths) in olive (Olea europaea L.) fruits at different degrees of pigmentation were assessed nondestructively by measuring chlorophyll fluorescence (ChlF). The method is based on the comparison of the ChlF excitation spectra from olives with different pigmentation from green to green-red, reddish-purple, and purple. The logarithm of the ratio between the fluorescence excitation sp...

Biomass from energy crops and agroindustrial wastes can be biologically converted to liquid or gaseous fuels, such as ethanol, methanol, methane and hydrogen, which was recently characterized as the fuel of the future. Hydrogen is a clean and environmentally friendly fuel, which produces water instead of greenhouse gases when combusted. It can be produced by renewable raw materials, such as org...