Quantitation of copper chlorophylls in green table olives by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography with inductively coupled plasma isotope dilution mass spectrometry.

Table olives, a widely consumed delicacy, are often selected by consumers based on the shade of their green color. The appealing coloration of fresh olives fades to brown or pale yellow during the industrial processing necessary for commercialization and storage, as a result of the degradation of chlorophyll a and b to their corresponding pheophytins and other chlorophyll degradation products (CDP). The re-greening of table olives may be achieved by complexation of CDP with Cu, to form stable bright green copper CDP (Cu-CDP) complexes. To study this phenomenon, we developed a novel method to separately extract lipophilic and hydrophilic Cu-CDP and quantify Cu-CDP by UHPLC combined with inductively coupled plasma isotope dilution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-ICP-ID-MS) using post-column isotopic dilution with Cu. This technique does not require species-specific calibration standards and was applied to survey the Cu-CDP composition of the various types of table olives sold in the US market. The CDP and Cu-CDP extracted from table olives were identified by high resolution full-scan mass spectrometry. Total elemental Cu in table olives was measured by microwave digestion followed by ICP-MS detection and correlated with the content of Cu-CDP. Pale yellow olives contained <1 mg/kg lipophilic Cu-CDP and <3.5 mg/kg total elemental Cu. Bright green table olives contained 4-22 mg/kg lipophilic Cu-CDP and 14.4-161 mg/kg total elemental Cu in contrast to <6 mg/kg reported for natural abundance, indicating the formation of Cu-CDP was achieved by addition of copper salts. A dark green sample with 2.5 mg/kg of total copper and 0.267 mg/kg lipophilic Cu-CDP may have been processed by addition of sodium copper chlorophyllin (SCC); the higher content of Cu isochlorin e4 compared to Cu 15-Me-chlorin e6 supports this conclusion.