Evaluation of irrigation doses and planting density of hemp(Cannabis sativa,L.)in a temperate climate through CRITIC-TOPSIS-OWAOA

Hemp is a high interest crop in the agri-food sector due to its large number of applications and its beneficial effects.However,there are no clear recommendations to optimize its production,perhaps due to its strict regulation.In order to optimize the management of the crop,the present work analyzes the effect of irrigation doses and planting density on the growth,production,and quality of the Kompolti variety of hemp,with an irrigation dose equal to the total water requirements of the plant and two deficit treatments,corresponding to 75 and 50%of these requirements,and two planting densities,7.0 and 3.1 plants m^(−2).For this,a multi-criteria analysis was performed that proposes the use of the Ordered Weighted Averaging(OWA)operator combined with the CRiteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation(CRITIC)to obtain the weights,where the correlation is obtained as a function of the Pearson-OWA,to determine the aggregation of the quadratic differences by assigning different levels of importance as a function of their size.This application allows for the objective estimation of the weights starting with the attitudinal character of the decisor and its integration to the TOPSIS method.The strength of the innovation proposal has been evaluated,demonstrating that it does not exhibit a rank reversal phenomenon.Furthermore,the resulting ranking has been compared with those obtained using direct assignment methods,such as TOPSIS itself,Multicriteria Optimization and Compromise Solution(VIKOR),and Simple Additive Weighting(SAW),revealing minimal differences.This allows us to regard the proposed method as a generalization of these approaches.In the conditions utilized,the irrigation dose had a greater effect on growth,production,and the content of long fibers,rather than the planting density.In turn,planting density had a greater influence on the cannabidiol(CBD)content as compared to the irrigation dose.The classification obtained was led by the treatments with a higher planting density.Among them,the decrease in the irrigation dose worsened the assessment of the treatments.However,when the planting dose is low,a moderate water deficit improves the results with respect to the complete irrigation treatment or with intense deficit irrigation.