Clone longetivity

I was wondering if you keep taking clones from the same line all the time if the strain gets weaker as you go.
Do you have to refresh the strain or will it keep on producing?

A mate of mine constantly grows , he has 3 rooms, 1 clones, 1 veg and 1 flower. Every 8 weeks he has a harvest.
Just before he puts them into his flower room he takes clones off them.
He has been wondering as he seems to think the strain is getting weaker and every now and then a harvest is no good, it looks ok but it's not as smelly or potent.

Your cloning from clones you are going to weaken the strain. That's why we keep our mothers and take cuttings from them to keep the consistency. Start a new batch and keep 2-3 females to make all your cuttings...


Welcome New Guy GL420:jointsmile::jointsmile::jointsmile:

Ahhhhh ok so thats why he is losing potency sometimes

Yes everytime you clone from a clone your killig the strain!!!!!

That's not true at all.

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Originally Posted by GreenLeaf420

Yes everytime you clone from a clone your killig the strain!!!!!

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If he keeps one for a mother next time will the mother regain the potency of the strain? it's AK-47 by the way.

Kymboed, a clone is an exact copy of the plant it was taken from. Nothing is lost in the cloning process. The only bit of truth to what GreenLeaf420 is saying is that over the course of hundreds of clone generations some genetic degradation can occur. But it's hard to imagine an amateur grower encountering that problem.

There are other factors that can attribute to clones losing their vigor, but if the plants are healthy then something else is contributing to the perceived lack of potency.

So there's no need for a mother plant then?

Mother plant is just a term for a plant which is used to donate cuttings for clones. For many people who have space restrictions they toss out their mother plants frequently and grow out a clone as a new mother plant.

If you need a large amount of clones and have plenty of space then you would probably keep a larger "mother plant" around and not replace it as often or ever. I've heard of people having 15 year old plants, but it's not a necessity.

Thanks Orzy

I have been clipping from mother to clone replenishing the mothers every 18 weeks with new clones to be future mothers. Almost a year and no weakness noticed at all. harvest every 6 weeks.

Thanks Orzy,and Blink....sorry i don't mean to hijack the post,but i was wondering the same thing about clones and mothers...So what you're saying is it would take a considerable amount of time,before there would be any loss of plant genetics..if any?:thumbsup:

Maybe he's just smoking too much? So he needs more to get high, seems like a simple explanation to me.

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Originally Posted by Orzy

The only bit of truth to what GreenLeaf420 is saying is that over the course of hundreds of clone generations some genetic degradation can occur.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Orzy

I've heard of people having 15 year old plants, but it's not a necessity.

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Sorry Orzie but I disagree!!!


A mother plant for 15 Yr?

The longest a mother is ever kept on my Veg is a Yr to a YR and a 1/2. Even a mother can not stay around for to long w/o fading off....

Through light manipulation we can now keep a pot plant alive indefinitely. There's a grower not too far away that has kept a plant alive for over 5 years.
But he doesn't clone from it. And it never flowers; it's in perpetual veg. It's more like a house plant.

The reason that clones lose vigor over time IMO is because marijuana is an annual. Without artificial sources of light it will complete it's life cycle and die in less than a year.
When you keep a donor plant alive for over a year, you are doing something unnatural, something no marijuana plant experienced through millions of years of evolution.

The plant you take clones from IS NOT a mother plant. Mother denotes (usually sexual) reproduction, and that's not what's happening when you take clones. The plant you take clones from is more correctly called a donor plant.
When you take a clone from a donor, that new plant, the clone, you shouldn't think of it as an exact reproduction of the donor plant--it IS the donor plant. You cut a piece of the donor plant off but it still is that plant.

So the plant, kept alive for longer than nature intended, loses vigor, which affects both yield and potency.

The difference in opinion is probably due to the fact that it affects some strains quicker than others.

If you take a original F1 seed to start a mother what is better to keep the original or take cutting from cuttings on and on? Fifth sixth generations loose there potency for sure....

Each time you flower the seedling and take cuttings over and over the plant looses it's potency and that is a fact in my Bible....

It even gets more technical then that I'm just blazed out I hope STINK stops by and gets technical on the issue...

People Reveg plants and they loose potency IMO.




GL420:jointsmile::jointsmile::jointsmile:

I like my bagseed :P

It's genetic. The genes are what dictates everything about life for the plant.
by clipping from a donor you are merely continuing the genetics. Genetic markers don't change, unless bred with other genetics.

conventional wisdom says Orzy is the one who is right.
if it appears that potency is lost, it's probably because you've built up a tolerance to that strain

I have to agree with Orzy. I've got a donor that's a few years old and there is no way it's cuttings have decreased in quality. A different donor about 18 months old is the same way. Sometimes it's just the strain. BigBuddha's Cheese is one of those strains that wacks you as well a year or more later as it does the first time you try it. I haven't tried his bluecheese yet. To me a mother or donor never completes it's life cycle. Since length of darkness determines whether a plant will flower or not I don't believe the plant knows anything but to veg with less than 12 hours dark. There have been debates on this subject for years and it's hard to argue either against the other. IMHO that it should take thousands of generations of clones from clones before there is genetic degradation. Also, there are clone only strains that have been around for 20 to 30 years and still coveted.

I'd have to agree...a clone is an exact genetic replica... it's hard to believe after one or two or even a hundred cuts would likely make it mutate genetically...

Back in the early-90's I had a fairly large-scale perpetual SOG going on a weekly harvest cycle, with a pretty high demand for clones. At the time I was using a more-or-less random combination of mother plants (what I now call "low-cycle propagation") and "clones of clones" (what I call "high-cycle propagation"). I started noticing a set of symptoms occurring in some individuals. I remembered reading Ed Rosenthal and Jorge Cervantes discussing issues with high-cycle clones of clones, and decided to test it for myself.

I started a test batch of 50 seeds, from several unrelated crosses. Normally I keep the clones in veg and flower the donors for the first screening round, but this time I kept the donors in veg and flowered the clones. After the first round of flowering, I had narrowed the field down to several prospective keepers, with the original seed plants still in veg. From that point I propagated all cultivars using both low-cycle and high-cycle methods in parallel, for several years. All mothers, veg plants, and flowering plants were grown side-by-side in identical conditions.

I tracked the exact lineage of each clone on it's tag; for example L210-3-5-2-7 would indicate the 7th clone from the 2nd clone from the 5th clone from the 3rd clone off the original L210 plant, and L210-3-5-2-12 would be another clone from the same donor.

After continuing this for about 2 years I observed symptoms in all of the high cycle lines (roughly 20 cycles) that were not present in the low-cycle lines for the same plant. Symptoms were not the same in all individuals of the same line, but many were segregated along branches of the family tree, and therefore traceable back to a single individual.

Based on those results I concluded that there is something about high-cycling that is detrimental, and have used low-cycle propagation ever since, and recommend a low-cycle propagation approach to anyone who is interested in maintaining a clone for a long time.

Keep in mind that phenotype = genes + environment. Different environmental conditions produce differing phenotypes.

"Potency" (both total cannabinoid content and THC content) is definitely influenced by environment, so growing a clone of the same plant in conditions that are less favorable for cannabinoid production will produce less potent buds.

Yield, potency, bud structure, and aromatic qualities are all controlled by quantitative trait loci [and are all affected by environmental conditions, in varying degrees. Cultivars that are described as "easy to grow" produce more consistent phenotypes in a wider range of environmental conditions than cultivars that are regarded as more difficult to grow.

If your grow room has excellent environmental control then you can expect a high degree of uniformity among clones. If there is a lot of variability in environmental conditions, then you will get a lot of variability among different grows of the same clone.

Beyond environmental factors, the genes themselves change over time, through the process of somatic cell mutation, and this also affects phenotype.


Well Just some info GL420 :jointsmile::jointsmile::jointsmile:

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Originally Posted by GreenLeaf420

Sorry Orzie but I disagree!!!

Each time you flower the seedling and take cuttings over and over the plant looses it's potency and that is a fact in my Bible....

It even gets more technical then that I'm just blazed out I hope STINK stops by and gets technical on the issue...

People Reveg plants and they loose potency IMO.

GL420:jointsmile::jointsmile::jointsmile:

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And how many times have you re-vegged or kept a clone mother...?

At the moment, I have 6 adults in my veg room. 2 are re-vegging indica's, 2 are re-vegging sativa's, 2 are clones from each. Approx. the same thing in my flower room.

Working right now on a fifth generation re-veg, (this is the 6th actual time in veg) and she shows no signs of degradation. I regularly take clones from this lady just before re-flowering, and same thing happens. She get's big, she gets frosty, she gets smoked, she gets re-vegged. As a medical cannabis grower and user, quality is very-much more important than quantity. However, with re-veging, I get both..quantity and quality.

As someone that's been cloning and re-vegging very sucessfully, I am totally willing to say that your statements are absolute bullshit.
As I used to need a grow 'guide', (it's not a bible, it's a guide) I understand your desire to follow it word for word, but it's a funny thing about grow guides...every few years we are presented with new techniques and technologies rendering some of that info obsolete. Nutes are more consistent, lights are still being re-defined, soil quality is remarkable. "Old wives tales" are slowly being smashed as we discover that it is just well-intentioned bullshit, or marketing techniques designed to sell products.

Somatic cell mutation...? Until you understand the growing process, likely you shouldn't worry about genetic mutations too much. But there is, of course a remedy for this too. If she starts to underperform...quit re-vegging her, and play with the seedlings for a couple of months. We're growing cannabis here, not a genetically modified feed-grain.

But if you're not interested in bigger plants in a shorter overall timeframe, or consistent results...keep doing what you're doing...you'll likely get the same results you always get. :thumbsup:

I will not attempt to sway everyone who disagrees learn @ your own experience.:D

I know from my personel experience.

Good Luck to all GL420:jointsmile::jointsmile::jointsmile: