Sensory characteristics of virgin olive oils from monovarietal Tunisian cultivars and hybrids with European varieties.

This paper describes a sensory analysis of olive oils from the main Tunisian cultivars: Chemlali, Chetoui, Sradki, Sayali and Hor Kesra, and one Spanish cultivar: Arbequina. Some hybrids obtained from controlled crossings between Tunisian and European cultivars: Hd 031, Hd 034, Hd 038, Hd 039, Hd 044 & Hd 045, were also analysed. Sensory evaluation of oils was performed in order to evaluate their sensory profiles. A Duncan Test (a = 0,05) was applied using the data of each attribute and showed differences between analysed oils, pointing out the oil from the hybrids HD 044 for its bitter attribute. All collected data were also submitted to Cluster analysis, based on the similarity in Euclidian distances, showing the difference between the oil from hybrid HD 044 and the rest.