Cloning a clone of a clone?

mrCRC420

mrCRC420

Well-Known Member
I agree that there are some changes/developments in each generation, perhaps through adapting better to your room, or because of different levels of various nutrients carried into each clone. BUT. I don't think the developments make enough impact to reduce the yield or potency to a point where it would become an issue. I've got a clone of a clone and I would def clone again if my mother plant died. Sorry that this was a weird answer.
 
Hablamos

Hablamos

Member
Simon from Serious seeds tell me couple years ago '' if you give the same treatment as you do for the seeds plant nothing will change ''

Personally i never keep seeds plant, i damn hate them ! My actual grow is fully loaded with clone plant taking from clone, for the fourth or fifth generation.

Same weed, same yield.
 
mehrific

mehrific

Well-Known Member
Article copied and pasted from http://steephilllab.com/mother-plants-grow-old/

Mother Plants Grow Old

It’s an old story: the grower can’t understand why the last three batches of clones from his mother plant ‘Old Reliable’ keep getting lower and lower potency values “….no matter how I change up the lighting, micro-nutrients, etc… originally my plants tested 15% CBD-A and 6% THC-A, now they down to 9% CBD-A and 4% THC-A.”

Then we ask “And the plants themselves, how do they appear compared to earlier clones off the same mother plant?” The answer “Not as robust as they used to be, and more mildew problems.”

It’s a common story, and is primarily all about old proteins and old DNA. All living organisms have a built-in clock, their ‘Circadian Clock’, which pretty much starts at Zero the day they/it are born/hatch/sprout. As you grow older, so do the proteins and DNA in your body, and as they get older, they breakdown, first slowly, yet over time the cumulation of damage starts to have appreciable effect on the organisms survivability.

The older a organism is when you clone from it, the more damage that is transferred into the new clones, therefore clones from the mother plants first year contain many less damaged proteins than clones taken during the mothers 3rd year. Bottom line: the longer you keep a mother plant, the poorer quality the clones will statistically be, and there is no way around it if you keep using the same mother plant.

This is why it is wise to seed out a small portion of one of your early clones, then safely store those seeds for long term storage, so you have a ready supply of new mother plants. Of course, bio-diversity being what it is, different seeds will have sprout to form different phenotypes, so you will need plenty of seed to get the new phenotypical mother you are interested in. IF the phenotype just happens to be the common phenotype, then this is easy since 50% of the seeds will be that common phenotype. If on the other hand, what you want is a rare phenotype, then your probability of getting what you want is much less (1/4, 1/8, 1/16/1/32, etc), so you will need a larger quantity of seed to find your desired plant.

edit: highlight main point
 
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Hablamos

Hablamos

Member
The steephilllab article is making me doubt about what I've always done.

Personally if i need 50 clones , i start 10 or 12 clones and i take 5 or 6 on each pseudo-mother plant to get my number and i usually kill them after that. i never keep mother plant in stock, i always take my clones at last minute before put them in flower to keep the genetics for the next OP, i keep the genetics for less then 1 year to try another, and/or when i lost it . !

probally the lower level of cbd/thc is a reaction if the clone have been taken from really big and old mother plant. I will focus on that detail in the future, but i think if you do it 3 or 4 times it's okay. For several year maybe it's not the same!

It's impossible for me to test the thc/cbd level even if i want to know it's impossible to tell just by smoke test.

maybe some are more favorable genetic to avoid this shit to happen.

Nice thread idea!
 
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Flagg420

Flagg420

Well-Known Member
I cloned multi generational clones over and over and over... But yea, the genetics got a little fuzzy after a while. I WAY lost count, but my Chai Tea on the drying rack right now, is the LAST of them... I started growing on that things great great great great....grand...sister? That was around 4yrs ago. Never mothered, always cloned the clones. Awesome buds, great high, smelledtasted like crunchberries... loved it.

But by the end, its resistances to mites were just plani gone. Was a 2x a week sprayer by the end. 3 diff. mite killers on a rotation, lol.
Also it got real leggy, scraggly... stretchy... bud production on original was 3.5-4oz latest were down to like 0.75-1.5oz...
Broke my heart, but like a rabid dog, it was a threat to the others, and not worth the risk. Executed.

(local breeder made it back when i picked it up, so not replaceable...)
 
Lemon king

Lemon king

Well-Known Member
colonuggs said:
ok here's my 123th clone of a clone of a clone......same strain, never mothered.

clones takin @ flower onset... 5 times a year.... for over 20 yrs

Have over 10 ELITE strains that I have kept for the last 8-10 years cloning. Clone of a clone of a clone of a.......




reveging your flowered plants... is a great way to save your cut of the strain... if your clones don't make it
Click to expand...
Great plant.....lemon larry??
 
Lemon king

Lemon king

Well-Known Member
So does that mean instead of taking clones from one mum with dead dna and.protiens.....is i then better to clone a clone to avoid passing on dead cells??
 
Doer

Doer

Well-Known Member
colonuggs said:
ok here's my 123th clone of a clone of a clone......same strain, never mothered.

clones takin @ flower onset... 5 times a year.... for over 20 yrs

Have over 10 ELITE strains that I have kept for the last 8-10 years cloning. Clone of a clone of a clone of a.......




reveging your flowered plants... is a great way to save your cut of the strain... if your clones don't make it
Click to expand...

Very pretty. Next time I grow, I am going to bigger containers, you have colas on the bottom. :)
 
Doer

Doer

Well-Known Member
Lemon king said:
So does that mean instead of taking clones from one mum with dead dna and.protiens.....is i then better to clone a clone to avoid passing on dead cells??
Click to expand...
You know in Botany, no one worries about this clone not good business.
Many many plants are only clones of clones of clones.....like Orchids.

Ganja clones have only one short coming. No tap root. Other than that, it is the same plant. We call it a clone, but it really is just a rooted cutting.

Clones, as we know is where the mammal eggs are split. Mammals can't take an appendage off it and grow a new mammal from that.

So we clone animals but we propagate plants.
 
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Dankfactory

Dankfactory

Well-Known Member
mehrific said:
Article copied and pasted from http://steephilllab.com/mother-plants-grow-old/

Mother Plants Grow Old

It’s an old story: the grower can’t understand why the last three batches of clones from his mother plant ‘Old Reliable’ keep getting lower and lower potency values “….no matter how I change up the lighting, micro-nutrients, etc… originally my plants tested 15% CBD-A and 6% THC-A, now they down to 9% CBD-A and 4% THC-A.”

Then we ask “And the plants themselves, how do they appear compared to earlier clones off the same mother plant?” The answer “Not as robust as they used to be, and more mildew problems.”

It’s a common story, and is primarily all about old proteins and old DNA. All living organisms have a built-in clock, their ‘Circadian Clock’, which pretty much starts at Zero the day they/it are born/hatch/sprout. As you grow older, so do the proteins and DNA in your body, and as they get older, they breakdown, first slowly, yet over time the cumulation of damage starts to have appreciable effect on the organisms survivability.

The older a organism is when you clone from it, the more damage that is transferred into the new clones, therefore clones from the mother plants first year contain many less damaged proteins than clones taken during the mothers 3rd year. Bottom line: the longer you keep a mother plant, the poorer quality the clones will statistically be, and there is no way around it if you keep using the same mother plant.

This is why it is wise to seed out a small portion of one of your early clones, then safely store those seeds for long term storage, so you have a ready supply of new mother plants. Of course, bio-diversity being what it is, different seeds will have sprout to form different phenotypes, so you will need plenty of seed to get the new phenotypical mother you are interested in. IF the phenotype just happens to be the common phenotype, then this is easy since 50% of the seeds will be that common phenotype. If on the other hand, what you want is a rare phenotype, then your probability of getting what you want is much less (1/4, 1/8, 1/16/1/32, etc), so you will need a larger quantity of seed to find your desired plant.

edit: highlight main point
Click to expand...
So, steephillabs is the end all, be all, to genetic cannabis research? All I see in the provided link is pure speculation with exactly zero scientific studies linked to support their findings. In fact, if you click on their actual "Research" link on the website, there is simply nothing to be found. On the contrary, and in regards to the so called genetic deterioration as it relates to circadian rhythms, the actual scientific data would argue that any known data on the topic is inconclusive at best.
"The progress achieved in the last 15 years toward unraveling the plant circadian clock mechanism is remarkable, but much remains unfinished. An outline of the oscillator mechanism has emerged but remains incomplete. Although we can safely conclude that the paradigm of interlocked feedback loops constituting a circadian oscillator is conserved in plants, not all the components have yet been identified, and the mechanistic details of almost every step are only incompletely understood. It is humbling that, after so much effort and progress, almost all questions remain only incompletely answered and, effectively, all questions remain! Moreover, the field is now expanding its view from the purely reductionist goal of identifying the oscillator itself to a consideration of the evolutionary and ecological consequences of variation in clock function, so a host of new questions are being considered. It is exhilarating to consider what a retrospective view a decade from now will reveal." (Source:Plantcell.org)
Obviously this isn't a study on cannabis THC content and it's alleged degradation over generations, but it must be said that simply throwing around buzzwords like the circadian clock by a highly suspect "research" outfit doesn't make it Science.

Many, many clone only's ( SFV for example) are just as dank today as they were twenty years ago. Gene degradation? I call bullshit.
 
Sativied

Sativied

Well-Known Member
Doer said:
You know in Botany, no one worries about this clone not good business.
Many many plants are only clones of clones of clones.....like Orchids.

Ganja clones have only one short coming. No tap root. Other than that, it is the same plant. We call it a clone, but it really is just a rooted cutting.

Clones, as we know is where the mammal eggs are split. Mammals can't take an appendage off it and grow a new mammal from that.

So we clone animals but we propagate plants.
Click to expand...
Good post man. That last thing, as you probably know but pointing it out anyway, is because a plant cell can turn into anything, while with animals that is not the case (hence the usefulness of stem cells..)

And the missing tap root is barely a short coming in practice. The roots respond the same way like the branches do when topping.
taproottopping.jpg Left is about half a day or so older but is missing the tap root. I also end up with the same amount of roots in my hydro setup whether I use clones or seeds.
 
torontoke

torontoke

Well-Known Member
I think clones from a first gen mother is by far the best plan.keep a mother in a small area surrounded by even t5s

If you take clones for clones from clones etc it does weken the genetics.

Most people are niave and instead they claim they are gettin a tolerance to a strain but i think its usually multiple clone genes that are just weaker each harvest.

Just my experience anyway im sure it has worked for others but i just prefer to keep a mom
 
Sativied

Sativied

Well-Known Member
torontoke said:
If you take clones for clones from clones etc it does weken the genetics.
Click to expand...
In practice it looks like it does but that's not from taking clones from clones or the number of times you do it. Taking clones from unhealthy, weak, sick, infected etc plants leads to weak clones and the longer you clone the clone the larger the chances you end up with something degraded. It does not per se "weaken the genetics". Using tissue culture you can grow a clone of only the genetics and filter out the diseases and whatever it picked up along the way, hence why tc is amongst others used to rejuvenate clones. Short of spontaneous mutations and exceptions, cloning does not equal genetic modification, on the contrary.

Let me put it differently:

It comes down to nurture vs nature. When you propagate plants sexually the resulting seeds are a result of half of each parent's genes. NOT of its nurture, but what the parents are by nature (their DNA). You can for example grow the parents in very cold environments, it won't mean their offspring will be able to handle cold environments better, and it won't mean the offspring will have carried over purple stems and droopiness from their cold parents.

When you propagate asexually, like cloning, you CAN transfer BOTH nature and nurture. I.e. if the parent of seeds get infected with whatever pest or disease, it doesn't mean the plants from their seeds will have it too. If you however would clone one of the infected parents...

So, in short:
colonuggs said:
the key is to ALWAYS take your clones from the healthiest plants
Click to expand...
 
Doer

Doer

Well-Known Member
Well, I'd like to see any evidence that "it does weaken the genetics."

There are countless ganja myths, however.
 
Dankfactory

Dankfactory

Well-Known Member
torontoke said:
I think clones from a first gen mother is by far the best plan.keep a mother in a small area surrounded by even t5s

If you take clones for clones from clones etc it does weken the genetics.

Most people are niave and instead they claim they are gettin a tolerance to a strain but i think its usually multiple clone genes that are just weaker each harvest.

Just my experience anyway im sure it has worked for others but i just prefer to keep a mom
Click to expand...
Any proof( scientific data) to support this claim? Or is just simply the usual baseless conjecture of which is responsible for many a grower subscribing to such techniques as urinating on their plants, kicking their pots, and playing Mozart to their garden during the bloom cycle?
 
colonuggs

colonuggs

Well-Known Member
torontoke said:
If you take clones for clones from clones etc it does weken the genetics.

Most people are niave and instead they claim they are gettin a tolerance to a strain but i think its usually multiple clone genes that are just weaker each harvest.
Click to expand...
I have never kept a mother plant and have the same cut 25 years later

clone right at onset...there is no need for a mom
 
torontoke

torontoke

Well-Known Member
I read it in an article in high times yrs ago.
I tried to just keep taking clones off of each new batch because i didnt want to keep a mother either but i caved because someone with alot of experience told me so.

If you guys are right then im happy to know it so thank you.

I never claimed to be a master i dont think im arjan or anything lmfao
 
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