Horticulture

 Horticulture is the art of cultivating plants in gardens to produce food and medicinal ingredients, or for comfort and ornamental purposes. Horticulturists are agriculturists who grow flowers, fruit and nuts, vegetables and herbs, as well as ornamental trees and lawns.

The study and practice of horticulture have been traced back thousand of years. Horticulture contributed to the transition from nomadic human communities to sedentary, or semi-sedentary, horticultural communities. Horticulure is divided into several categories which focus on the cultivation and processing of different types of plants and food items for specific purposes. In order to conserve the science of horticulture, multiple organizations worldwide educate, encourage, and promote the advancement of horticulture. Some noble horticulturists include Luca Ghini and Luther Burbank.

Horticulture involves plant propagation and cultivation to improve plant growth, yields, quality, nutritional value, and resistance to insects, diseases, and environmental stresses. It also includes plant conservation, landscape restoration, soil management, landscape and garden design, construction and maintenance, and arboriculture. The word horticulture is modeled after agriculture, it derives from the Latin words hortus and cultura, which mean "garden" and "cultivation," respectively. In contrast to agriculture, horticulture does not include extensive crop farming and large-scale crop protection or animal husbandry. Additionally, horticulture focuses on the use of small plots with a wide variety of mixed crops while agriculture focuses on one large primary crop at a time.

There are several major areas of focus within the science of horticulture. They include:

• Olericulture: the production of vegetables.
• Pomology, also called fruiticulture: the production of fruits and nuts.
• Viticulture: the production of grapes (largely intended for winemaking).
• Floriculture: the production of flowering and ornamental plants.
• Turf management: the production and maintenance of turf grass for sports, leisure, and amenity use.
• Aboriculture: the cultivation and care of individual trees, shrubs, vines, and other perennial woody plants, primarily for landscape and amenity purposes.
• Landscape horticulture: the selection, production and care of plants used in landscape architecture.
• Postharvest physiology: the management of harvested horticultural crops to retard spoilage while stored or transported.

The history of horticulture overlaps with the history of agriculture and history of botany.

The origins of horticulture lie in the transition of human commodities from a nomadic lifestyle as hunter-gatherers to sedentary, or semi-sedentary, horticultural communities. In the Pre-Columbian Amazon Rainforest, natives used biochar to enhance soil productivity by smoldering plant waste. European settlers called this soil Terra Preta de Indio. In forest areas, such horticulture was often carried out in swiddens or "slash and burn" areas. In pre-contact North America, the semi-sedentary horticultural communities of the Eastern Woodlands, who grew maize, squash, and sunflower, contrasted markedly with the nomadic hunter-gatherer commodities of the Plains people. Mesoamerican culture focused in the cultivating of crops on a small scale, such as the "milpa" or maize field, around their dwellings or in specialized plots which were visited occasionally during migrations from one area to the next. In Central America, Maya horticulture involved augmentation of the forest with useful trees such as papaya, avocado, cacao, ceiba, and sapodilla. In the cornfields, multiple crops such as beans, squash, pumpkins, chili peppers were grown, and in some cultures, these crops were tended mainly or exclusively by women.

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