| History of Hydroponics |
| Written by Sean |
| Thursday, 12 June 2008 00:00 |
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Ancient individuals such as the Babylonians and Aztecs applied growing proficiencies where nutrients were obtained from sources other than dirt. The mineral nutrient solutions used today for hydroponics were not developed until the 1800s. The earliest published work on growing terrestrial plants without dirt was the 1627 book, Sylva Sylvarum by Sir Francis Bacon, although he passed in 1626. Water culture became a popular research technique after that. In 1699, John Woodward published his water culture experiments with spearmint. He learned that plants in less-pure water reservoirs grew better than plants in distilled water. Mineral nutrient solutions for soilless culture of plants were first perfected in the 1860s by the German botanists, Julius von Sachs and Wilhelm Knop. Growing of terrestrial plants without soil in mineral nutrient solutions was called solution culture. It quickly became a common research and teaching technique and is still widely practiced today. Solution culture is now considered a type of hydroponics where there is no inert medium.
In 1929, Professor William Frederick Gericke of the University of California at Berkeley began publicly encouraging that solution culture be used for agricultural crop production. He first termed it aquaculture but later learned that aquaculture was already utilized to culture of aquatic organisms. Gericke created a sensation by producing tomato and other plants to a remarkable size in his backyard in mineral nutrient solutions rather than soil. By analogy with the ancient Greek term for agriculture, geoponics, the science of cultivating the earth, Gericke introduced the term hydroponics in 1937 (although he asserts that the term was suggested by Dr. W. A. Setchell, of the University of California) for the culture of plants in water (from the Greek hydros, water, and ponos, labor).
Reports of Gericke's work and his claims that hydroponics would revolutionize plant agriculture prompted a huge number of requests for further information. Gericke declined to reveal his secrets claiming he had done the work at home on his own time. This refusal eventually resulted in his leaving the University of California. In 1940, he wrote the book, Complete Guide to Soilless Gardening.
Two other plant nutritionists at the University of California were asked to research Gericke's claims. Dennis R. Hoagland and Daniel I. Arnon wrote a classic 1938 agricultural bulletin, The Water Culture Method for Growing Plants without Soil, exposing the exaggerated claims made about hydroponics. Hoagland and Arnon found that hydroponic crop yields were no better than crop yields with good quality soils. Crop yields were ultimately limited by factors other than mineral nutrients, especially light. This research, however, overlooked the fact that hydroponics has other advantages including the fact that the roots of the plant have continuous access to oxygen and that the plants have access to as much or as little water as they need. This is important as one of the most common errors when growing is over- and under- watering; and hydroponics keeps this from happening as significant amounts of water can be made available to the plant and any water not used, drained away, recirculated, or actively aerated, eliminating anoxic conditions which overwhelm root systems in soil. In soil, a grower needs to be very experienced to know exactly how much water to feed the plant. Too much and the plant will not be able to access oxygen; too little and the plant will lose the ability to transport nutrients, which are typically moved into the roots while in solution.
These two researchers developed several formulas for mineral nutrient solutions, known as Hoagland solutions. Modified Hoagland solutions are still used today.
One of the early successes of hydroponics occurred on Wake Island, a rocky atoll in the Pacific Ocean used as a refueling stop for Pan American Airlines. Hydroponics was used there in the 1930s to grow vegetables for the passengers. Hydroponics was a requirement on Wake Island because there was no soil, and it was prohibitively expensive to airlift in fresh vegetables.
In the 1960s, Allen Cooper of England developed the Nutrient Film Technique. The Land Pavilion at Walt Disney World's EPCOT Center opened in 1982 and prominently features a variety of hydroponic proficiencies. In recent decades, NASA has done comprehensive hydroponic research for their Controlled Ecological Life Support System or CELSS. Hydroponics intended to take place on Mars are using LED lighting to grow in different color spectrums with much less heat.
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