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The Vetiver Network International (TVNI)
Vetiver System Applications
What vetiver does on farms, slopes, waterways and polluted sites
The Vetiver System (VS) is the umbrella name for the many uses of Vetiver Grass Technology (VGT). The same plant, Chrysopogon zizanioides, planted as a dense, narrow hedge, manages rainfall runoff, holds soil, stabilizes slopes and banks, and cleans polluted water. Its leaves and roots also give useful products: mulch, forage, thatch, handicrafts and essential oil.
These pages describe each application with field examples from TVNI’s network, drawn from case studies, user feedback and research collected over the past 40 years. Each application links to the TVNI standard or guide that tells you how to design and plant it.
Choose an application
Agriculture
Soil and water conservation on farms, soil fertility, regenerative farming, mulch, pest control, forage, gardens and large estates.
Water and Watersheds
Whole watersheds, river and stream banks, coastal protection and sea dikes, canals and levees, dams, ponds and drains.
Slopes and Infrastructure
Highways, rural roads, railways, utility rights-of-way, bridges, building sites, landslide repair and land rehabilitation.
Pollution and Wastewater
Household sewage, farm and fish-pond effluent, industrial effluent, landfill leachate, mine wastes and contaminated land.
Other Uses and Benefits
Handicrafts, thatch, vetiver oil, medicinal uses, and carbon storage.
Design Standards and Guides
How to design, plant and check any vetiver application. Read the relevant standard or guide before you plan a project or order plants. The package also explains what vetiver can and cannot do.
Disaster risk reduction
Extreme rainfall, cyclones and earthquakes do most of their damage through concentrated flows of water: landslides, floods, washed-out roads and breached dikes. Vetiver reduces that risk in many of the applications on these pages. It slows and spreads runoff, holds shallow slopes, and protects banks and dikes. Proven examples include:
- highways in El Salvador that withstood Hurricane Mitch in 1998;
- Madagascar’s FCE railway, which cyclones used to close for months every year (Vetiver Victorious);
- sea dikes in Vietnam that survived the worst typhoons in 50 years;
- highways in China, Malaysia and Vietnam protected from slips in tropical storms.
Land rehabilitation and gullies
Watershed protection
River banks
Coastal protection and sea dikes
Canals, dikes and levees
Know the limits: vetiver protects against shallow failures, within its rooted zone of about 2 m. Deep-seated or active landslides need engineering design. See module B on the Design Standards page.
Climate: drought and carbon
Vetiver hedges help farms through dry spells: more of the rain soaks in where it falls, groundwater is recharged, and the cut leaves make a mulch that keeps soil cool and moist. Vetiver also stores carbon in its leaves and deep roots. Claims about how much carbon it locks away for the long term need care; see Carbon storage.
Where to start
New to vetiver? Read Vetiver Grass Technology first, then the short introduction The Vetiver System (PDF). Each application section links to a short illustrated photo essay. To get plants, see the Global Vetiver Grass Plant Suppliers; to see vetiver tested on farms, see the Global Vetiver Farmer Program.
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