Olive oil is a vegetable oil for culinary use mainly extracted from freshly picked fruit of the olive tree (Olea europaea) called olive or olive. Almost one third of the olive pulp is oil, it is for this reason since ancient times has its oil extracted easily with a simple pressure of a primitive mill (mill). Its use is primarily culinary, but has been used for cosmetic purposes, as well as everyday in the oil lamps. The olive oil or can not eat because of the bitter taste (due mainly to the presence of phenolic compounds), this flavor is greatly reduced by applying different curing processes. However 90% of world production of olives will produce oil. Only 2% of global production takes place outside the area of the Mediterranean and Spain, Italy and Greece hoard three quarters of world production.

The oil is extracted from ripe olives between six and eight months, just when they contain the maximum amount of oil and is usually in late autumn. The olives are subjected to a first pressure in order to extract their juice, the quality of oil depends heavily on further processing. It is for this reason that producers monitor these steps carefully. The olive oil quality is judged by its organoleptic and its content of free fatty acids. There are EU regulations governing the oil ratings in six categories according to the concentration of fatty acids. [To be distinguished olive cultivation (called: olive cultivation) and the olive oil extraction (called: olive oil extraction).

The study of the properties of olive oil and olive cultivation, olive cultivation is called, being a branch of olive oil extraction from the Greek meaning Elaios crop science of extracting vegetable oils such as olive oil the same, oil sunflower, peanut, palm, etc..