DEVELOPMENT AND ROPERTY EVALUATION OF AGAVE (Agave angustifolia) LEAVES GEOTEXTILE NET AS SOIL EROSION CONTROL MATERIAL

Agave angustiplia or "Banded Caribbean Agave" is mostly grown in the wild and has no common utility other than being a popular garden plant. Its fiber was found to have fiber crystallinity of 55%, thermal stability up to 270°C and cellulose content of around 65% similar to cotton. These properties suggest that the plant is very suitable for textile applications. The objective of the study is to evaluate the performance of a biological geotextile net made from the agave fibers as a soil erosion mitigator along with a commercial coco coir geotextile net and bare soil surface. A rainfall simulator was setup at Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Complex — Thesis Area at Mindanao State University, General Santos City and the treatments are subjected to two rainfall events using different water sprinklers to simulate varying rainfall intensities on a sandy loam soil. Runoff samples for sediment analysis were tested in MSU—Gensan College of Agriculture Soil and Water Laboratory. The following are gathered: volume of runoff, runoff discharge rate, runoff coefficient, sediment concentration and sediment yield. The study found out that the agave geotextile net performed as effectively as the coco coir geotextile net in mitigating runoff and soil erosion by greatly reducing variables such as volume of runoff, sediment concentration and sediment yield, as compared to bare soil. Statistical analysis showed that agave geotextile net's performance as soil erosion control material is not significantly different from that of coco coir but, in fact, numerically better than coco coir; and significantly better than bare soil