Floating raft cultivation (precursor of hydroponics)
Cultivo flotante en balsas (precedente de la hidroponía)
- Date
- c. 304 · confidence medium
- Place
- Lingnan region (present-day Guangdong), China
- Credited to
- Ji Han
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
In his botanical treatise Nanfang Caomu Zhuang, the scholar Ji Han described woven reed rafts with holes where plants were sown to float on the water like duckweed; it is the earliest known account of soilless cultivation.
No demonstrated continuity with modern scientific hydroponics, formulated centuries later by Woodward (1699) and named by Gericke (1937); it is cited as an independent historical precedent.
What it led to
- The earliest known record of soilless agriculture
- A precedent cited in the history of modern hydroponics