Aquaponics is a term that was coined in the 1970s, but the practice has ancient roots.

The earliest example of one branch may be the lowland Maya, followed by the Aztecs, who raised plants on rafts on the surface of a lake in approximately 1,000 A.D.

The Aztecs cultivated a system of agricultural islands known as chinampas in a system considered by some to be the first form of aquaponics for agricultural use. Chinampas are networks of canals and stationary artificial islands in which they cultivated crops on the islands using nutrient-rich mud and water from the canals.

In the early chinampa systems, plants were raised on stationary (and sometime movable) islands in lake shallows. Nutrient-rich waste materials dredged from the Chinampa canals and the surrounding cities was then used to manually irrigate the plants above.

The earliest example of another branch can be found in South China, Thailand, and Indonesia, where the cultivation and farmimg rice in paddy fields in combination with fish are cited as examples of early aquaponics systems.

These polycultural farming systems existed in many Far Eastern countries and raised fish such as the oriental loach, swamp eel, Common and crucian carp as well as pond snails in the paddies.

The ancient Chinese employed a system of integrated aquaculture in which finfish, catfish, ducks and plants co-existed in a symbiotic relationship.

The ducks were housed in cages over the finfish ponds, and the finfish processed the wastes from the ducks. In a lower pond, the catfish live on the wastes that have flowed from the finfish pond.

At the bottom of the system, the water from the catfish ponds was used for irrigated rice and vegetable crops.

In a modern context, Aquaponics emerged from the aquaculture industry as fish farmers were exploring methods of raising fish while trying to decrease their dependence on the land, water and other resources.

Traditionally, fish were raised in large ponds, or in netted pens off coastlines, but in the past 35 years, much progress has been made in Recirculating Aquaculture Systems, or RAS

The advantage of RAS is that fish can be stocked much more densely, thus using only a fraction of the water and space to grow the same amount of fish as pond or netting based systems.

The (rather large) disadvantage is the large amount of waste water that quickly accumulates and the antibiotics needed to keep the fish healthy, both of which impacts on the rest of the biosphere – both in RAS systems and also in netting based systems based in estuaries.

For many years aquaponics has been a thing only in certain English-speaking countries. Today, however, many new commercial or investment projects are emerging which moves aquaponics to a higher level. The number of businesses and organizations that have an aquaplaning system established and functional, as one of many activities, is rising.

The basic barriers to system acquisition, among farmers, are the high initial costs, the large amount of knowledge required and the necessary know-how. Although Aquaponics has begun to be promoted for the first time in a North American environment that is very different from European (market, agricultural, land-based), the number of aquaculture subjects is also increasing in Europe. Especially thanks to the adaptation of the "climate" in the greenhouse and the variety of cultivation.

This could be solved in the future by developing intelligent sensors and applications that would enable the user to provide full and comprehensible information and help with the operation and operation of the entire system.

One possible link between aquaplaning and urbanization is the so-called urban vertical farm that could use the residual heat from large businesses.

If the problems of the aquaplaning system can be solved in the near future, we can expect its boom as a new source for cultivation.

As part of the aquaponics and settlement of planets, there is more talk of technology to be used to harvest food.

Thanks to aquaponics, the first inhabitants of Mars could get the first animal protein. This is a highly effective method since the aquaponic system has a highly effective relationship in space, water and usable materials.

Source: http://www.marspapers.org/paper/Merkle_2016_pres.pdf