Soil bioengineering is the concept of utilizing plants, including its roots, to strengthen or stabilize soils with poor engineering properties such as soils in natural and manmade slopes. This technique is widely used in many countries and is also practised in India. Most of the research works done related to soil bio engineering are by ecological researchers, geotechnical research works related to utilizing the plant roots as reinforcement are few in India. In this research works, an attempt is made to study the strength variation in a landslide-affected soil by stabilizing the soil with plant roots obtained from readily available plants in the study area. The roots were obtained and a particular root mass (Lemon grass root) was introduced in the soil and the geotechnical property changes were verified. It was found that the incorporation of the plant roots in the soil matrix improved the stability of the soil. Consequently, the plant roots studied can be cheap materials for improving the stability of slopes, especially in landslide-affected areas. © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.