Garcia de Orta (or Garcia d'Orta) (1501? – 1568) was a Portuguese Renaissance Sephardi Jewish physician, herbalist and naturalist. He was a pioneer of tropical medicine, pharmacognosy and ethnobotany, working mainly in Goa, then a Portuguese colony in India. Garcia de Orta used an experimental approach to the identification and use of herbal medicines rather than the traditional approach of using received knowledge.