EVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF SUGARCANE (Saccharum officinarum L.) BAGASSE MAT AS SOIL EROSION CONTROL MATERIAL

The study was conducted to develop and evaluate a soil erosion control material made from sugarcane bagasse, the third most produced agricultural by-product in our country. The experimental procedure was conducted at Cannery Site, Polomolok South Cotabato. The sugarcane bagasse mat was evaluated using soil erosion test boxes with a sandy loam type of soil and subjecting it into three actual rainfall events, alongside with coco coir net, a commercially available soil erosion control material and both compared to bare soil or no ground cover as control. The results of the evaluation showed that there is no significant difference at 5% level of significance in runoff discharge, having a mean of 0.000303 L/s for sugarcane bagasse mat and 0.000292 L/s for coco coir net, compared to no ground cover with mean of 0.000388 L/s. However, the ANOVA and mean pairwise comparison for sediment concentration revealed that both the ground covers SBM and CCN with a mean of 0.342 g/L and 0.253 g/L respectively, has significantly affected the sediment concentration compared to no ground cover with a mean of 1.562 g/L. The overall results showed that SBM is comparable to CCN as an effective soil erosion control material in terms of reducing sediment yield, having a mean of 1.06 x 10-7 kg/s for SBM and 7.56 x 10-8 kg/s for CCN, which are both significantly better compared to no ground cover with a mean of 6.13 x 10-7 kg/s. The sugarcane bagasse mat has the potential to be used as soil erosion control material as the sediment concentration and sediment yield were significantly reduced when compared with soil erosion in bare soil. In addition, SBM has no significant difference from the CCN which gives high probability of the material to be developed into a viable soil erosion control material