Developmental plans in the areas that make use of irrigation, discuss, commonly, water quality parameters with the objective of eliminating or minimizing unfavorable impacts on agriculture and on public health. Using this as a focus point, this paper contributes to the selection and classification of quality parameters that are envolved with the irrigation process, by importance order. Thus, six parameters (fecal coliform, hydrogenionical potential, biochemical demand of oxygen, cloride, total nitrogen, and electrical conductivity) are hierarquisated using the multicriterial methods Electre I and II related to nine irrigated cultures (tomatoes, potatoes, beans, oranges, strawberries, peaches, lettuce, carrots and beets). The study area is the Piracicaba river basin, Sao Paulo State, Brazil. The results demonstrate that, for this region, the parameters with the highest preference are the fecal coliform and the electrical conductivity and the least preference is the biochemical demand of oxygen.
Piracicaba river; water quality; irrigation; Electre I e II