I bet when you made your Civ you did not pick the farmer ability.

 You need to choose farmers to get hydroponics and it's branch. The other three choices in that section also allow a branch of tech. Part of the Supernova changes if you were on Epic.

I assume I did not get that chance to choose since I picked quick start

IIRC, Hydroponics was common to pretty much most in GC4. (without having to pick farmer)

But when playing the Alarians or Humans in supernova and trying to add one of the botanical-resources to a colony, it would never let me with the tooltip saying it required "Hydroponics".

Then went and checked the research tree and it was nowhere to be found.