thumb|275x275px|NASA researcher Ray Wheeler checking hydroponic [[onions (center), Bibb lettuces (left), and radishes (right)|alt=]]
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants in water-based solutions without soil, as shown in this NASA research example with onions, lettuce, and radishes. This approach matters because it allows crops to be grown in controlled environments, which could be valuable for applications like space exploration and producing food in areas where traditional soil-based farming is difficult.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
thumb|275x275px|NASA researcher Ray Wheeler checking hydroponic [[onions (center), Bibb lettuces (left), and radishes (right)|alt=]]
Hydroponics is a type of horticulture and a subset of hydroculture which involves growing plants, usually crops or medicinal plants, without soil, by using water-based mineral nutrient solutions in an artificial environment. Terrestrial or aquatic plants may grow freely with their roots exposed to the nutritious liquid or the roots may be mechanically supported by an inert medium such as perlite, gravel, or other substrates.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).