APPLICATION OF MULTI CRITERIA DECISION TECHNIQUE TO DETERMINE THE BEST CHICKPEA CULTIVARS WITH HIGH ANTIOXIDANT POTENTIAL

Abstract

In this study, technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution(TOPSIS) analysis, which is multi criteria decision making method, was firstlyapplied to rank the most suitable cultivars among 12 registered chickpeas for highantioxidant potentials. Registered chickpea cultivars were grown in trial fields ofstate research institute in 2015, Adana, Turkey. The cultivars were analyzed for thecriteria such as their water-soluble protein content (WSPC), total phenolic content(TPC), free radical scavenging activity (FRSA) and iron chelating activity (ICA)which were related to their antioxidant potentials. However, depending on eachcriterion, the ranking of the cultivars was completely different so that TOPSISanalysis was applied to the obtained data in six steps. Firstly, the decision matrixwas constructed and then each criterion was weighted as respectively 0.40, 0.30,0.20, 0.10 for FRSA, TPC, ICA, and WSPC by the researchers. After the weightednormalized decision matrix was constructed, the positive ideal and negative idealsolutions were determined. Then the separation measures for each alternative werecalculated (Si* and Si- for the separation from positive and negative idealalternative, respectively). Finally, the relative closeness to ideal solution wascalculated (Ci*). The cultivar Seçkin with the highest Ci* value (0.776) was thefirst rank and followed by Aydın, Azkan, and Çakır. This study showed theusefulness of TOPSIS analysis in the multi criteria decision making process whenthe presence of different parameters related to same property of sample set such asantioxidant potential of chickpea cultivars.