Hydroponics can be a means of growing plants in nutrient water without having to use soil. Instead of soil a non-reacting medium is utilized such as perlite, gravel, or even the husk of coconuts. It was called early as the 18 century that plants absorb their minerals in water as ions. The soil in traditional growing behaves as a nutrient reservoir but won't actually contribute to plants growth. Water dissolves the minerals inside plants soil enabling the plants for their services. In hydroponics the minerals essential for plants growth are artificially dissolved in water making soil unnecessary. You'll be able to grow almost any soil based plant using hydroponics. Hydroponics is definately a promising field that there's much research into various ways in the academic community.
The 1st book ever published on hydroponics was published in 1627. Then, water cultivation soon was a popular technique. Experiments were done plus 1699 it was found that plants grown in sterilized water grew less rapidly then plants grown in plain water. This really is due to the dissolved ions throughout non-pure water. By 1842 scientists had published a listing of nine elements thought to be responsible for plant growth and the results of which generated what is known as modern hydroponics. Initially they used soilless cultivation and grew terrestrial plants while using the nine essential elements. It quickly spread throughout academia and became an area of hot research.
One of the first achievements of hydroponics was performed by Dr. Gericke at the University of Berkley. He been able to create tomato plants that grew to around 25 feet tall. Back then this was considered only possible because of the usage of hydroponics. He claimed that hydroponics would revolutionize growing. If only he were alive right now to see how it has. He wrote a magazine in 1940 called the Complete Self-help guide to Soilless Growing which took over as go to guide on hydroponics of the company's day; although, to start with he refused to publicly reveal his secret.
Because of the extravagant nature of his claims several scientists start reviewing his work. Initially they found that soilless growing was no better than soil growing. They found that the yield of crops were tied to other factors other than minerals, for example light. The research overlooked most of the important factors that make hydroponics benefit plants. Namely that hydroponics allows the plants roots to get more oxygen. During this time period mineral solutions were developed called Hoagland solutions were developed and still in use today. Hydroponics was used on Wake Island early on to grow vegetables high was no soil. Recently hydroponics may be thoroughly researched by NASA.
While using advancement of modern hydroponics along came advances in grow lights. At first the introduction of HPS (high pressure sodium) grow lights allowed plants being grown indoors. They produced high light output and allowed plants to mature fully. Recently the advances of LED grow lights has begun to revolutionize the concept of hydroponics. They completely remove the heat issues that happen with HPS lights which enable it to reduce electrical costs by approximately two thirds.