page_title: Aquaponics
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Aquaponics / History
caption_attribution_description: 中文: 《農器圖譜》：架田
context_page_description: Aquaponics refers to any system that combines conventional aquaculture with hydroponics in a symbiotic environment. In normal aquaculture, excretions from the animals being raised can accumulate in the water, increasing toxicity. In an aquaponic system, water from an aquaculture system is fed to a hydroponic system where the by-products are broken down by nitrifying bacteria initially into nitrites and subsequently into nitrates that are utilized by the plants as nutrients. Then, the water is recirculated back to the aquaculture system.
  As existing hydroponic and aquaculture farming techniques form the basis for all aquaponic systems, the size, complexity, and types of foods grown in an aquaponic system can vary as much as any system found in either distinct farming discipline.
context_section_description: Aquaponics has ancient roots, although there is some debate on its first occurrence:
  Aztec cultivated agricultural islands known as chinampas in a system considered by some to be an early form of aquaponics for agricultural use, where plants were raised on stationary (or sometime movable) islands in lake shallows and waste materials dredged from the Chinampa canals and surrounding cities were used to manually irrigate the plants.
  South China and the whole of Southeast Asia, where rice was cultivated and farmed in paddy fields in combination with fish, are cited as examples of early aquaponics systems, although the technology had been brought by Chinese settlers who had migrated from Yunnan around 5 AD. These polycultural farming systems existed in many Far Eastern countries and raised fish such as the oriental loach (泥鳅, ドジョウ), swamp eel (黄鳝, 田鰻), common carp (鯉魚, コイ) and crucian carp (鯽魚) as well as pond snails (田螺) in the paddies.
  The 13th century Chinese agricultural manual Wang Zhen's Book on Farming (王禎農書) described floating wooden rafts which were piled with mud and dirt and which were used for growing rice, wild rice, and fodder. Such floating planters were employed in regions constituting the modern provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian. These floating planters are known as either jiatian (架田) or fengtian (葑田), which translates to "framed paddy" and "brassica paddy", respectively. The agricultural work also references earlier Chinese texts, which indicated that floating raft rice cultivation was being used as early as the Tang Dynasty (6th century) and Northern Song Dynasty (8th century) periods of Chinese history.
  Floating aquaponics systems on polycultural fish ponds have been installed in China in more recent years on a large scale. They are used to grow rice, wheat and canna lily and other crops, with some installations exceeding 2.5 acres (10,000 m²).
  The development of modern aquaponics is often attributed to the various works of the New Alchemy Institute and the works of Dr. Mark McMurtry et al. at the North Carolina State University, who devised an "Integrated Aqua-Vegeculture System" (iAVs) based on the combination of aquaculture and sand-based grow beds.
  Inspired by the successes of the New Alchemy Institute and McMurtry's iAVs, other institutes soon followed suit. Starting in 1979, Dr. James Rakocy and his colleagues at the University of the Virgin Islands researched and developed the use of deep water culture hydroponic grow beds in a large-scale aquaponics system.
  Other institutes focused their research on "ebb and flow" systems (also known as "flood and drain"), which were partially based on the original ideas developed at North Carolina State University, but where coarse media (such as gravel or expanded clay) replaced sand, while bell syphons allowed an ebb-and-flow irrigation cycle, such systems are also known as "Speraneo Systems" because they are based on ideas developed in the 1990s by Tom and Paula Speraneo, owners of an aquaponics farm in Missouri.
  The first aquaponics research in Canada was a small system added onto existing aquaculture research at a research station in Lethbridge, Alberta. Canada saw a rise in aquaponics setups throughout the '90s, predominantly as commercial installations raising high-value crops such as trout and lettuce. A setup based on the deepwater system developed at the University of Virgin Islands was built in a greenhouse at Brooks, Alberta where Dr. Nick Savidov and colleagues researched aquaponics from a background of plant science. The team made findings on rapid root growth in aquaponics systems and on closing the solid-waste loop and found that, owing to certain advantages in the system over traditional aquaculture, the system can run well at a low pH level, which is favored by plants but not fish.
caption: Woodcut from the 13th century Chinese agricultural manual Wang Zhen's Book on Farming (王禎農書) showing rice grown in a floating raft planter system (架田, lit "framed paddy") in a pond
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