I have read the following argument a few times and I do not know if it is true but it does sound feasible.
Do clones lose potency? I've seen this topic discussed before.
Some growers say no, but I disagree because it's happened to me and my friends.
Through light manipulation we can now keep a pot plant alive indefinately. 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 perpertual 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 that is accurate taking clones from clones would have the same effect over time. It would still be the original donor plant being artificially kept alive much longer than evolution or Mother Nature or God or whoever or whatever intended it to survive possibly causing some degree of breakdown over time.
　
Then again …. Maybe not.
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