Yes genetics CAN degrade over time but nothing sais it will at a particular time. Its all in probability.
I have a genetic chart for every clone and plant that make it possible to follow it back to its original seed and I will never take clones to use for production that is more than 2 generations away from the original seed.

As it is now I took clones from all my seed bred plants. I put them in 12/12. 5th week of bloom I selected which one had the best traits and threw out the non corresponding clones and made mothers of the clones from that plant.
I have to be VERY unlucky to have a genetic degrade in fewer than 4-10 generations from seed purelly mathematically so if I stay at first to 2nd generation I will by all probability be in the safe from that problem. And, since a good kept mother can be kept for 5-10 years I'd say its unlikelly I will have to worry about my WW genetics for quite some time if I don't loose all my plants at the same time. Worst case I have to go to third generation cloning for some years before I do a new search for a superfemale from a seed grow.
Next step for me atm is to do a sative seed grow during the winter at some point and from there try to find a good mother as well so I have White Widow, Hindu Kush (already making a mother of that) and then a 3rd strain from a sativa I have not decided on yet. Strawberry Cough or Arjans Super Silver Haze #3 (very nice smoke and the lowest sativa in the world) as I think now. Time will tell.

Puffzter
Puffzter Reviewed by Puffzter on . Question about how to make a good mother Hello. I am growing a nice first grow of White Widows and took 2 clones from each of them before I flipped to 12/12. Now I have isolated which one of the plants I want to be the grand mom of my future grows of WW and am therefor in the process of making the corresponding clones into mothers. My question is how is this best done? What I have done is to FIM the top first one time and then the new tops one more time as well as 2 of the highest branches. It makes sence to me to make a Rating: 5