THE earthen channels are frequently used for the water conveyance by the farmers in developing countries. The soil of the Bastar plateau is more valnerable for the seepage through channels which necessitates the saving of water (Ray et al., 1978) by low cost technology to improve the socio-economic condition of the poor farmers. In the past, a few attempts have been made to check the seepage loss of water by lining of channels with soil + cement, chemical sealment, bituminous mixture, polythylene film, impervious earth materials etc. (Anon, 1985 ; Michael, 1986; Sahu et al., 1992). But these techniques could not be accepted by the farmers due to one or the other reasons like their rare availability and high cost. However, the literature is scarce onthe use of various coating materials such as waste cement, coaltar, mud paste and cowdung slurry to check out the seepage losses and therefore, detailed investigation was done using these materials for coating the channels to get the maximum saving of water with the low cost-input technology.
展开▼
