# clone of a clone of a clone of a clone.....



## YouGrowBoy (Sep 6, 2009)

I have an advanced cloning question. Is it ok to be taking clones of clones going on for many generations?

Usually, right before going to flower, I'll take some lower branches from a clone to start the next crop. When these clones are ready to flower, I'll take some more and repeat the process again. This means having no mother.

How many generations can this process go on and will the deeper generation clones start to have any problems?

Thanks, YGB


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## Cane'Bosem (Sep 6, 2009)

YouGrowBoy said:


> I have an advanced cloning question. Is it ok to be taking clones of clones going on for many generations?
> 
> Usually, right before going to flower, I'll take some lower branches from a clone to start the next crop. When these clones are ready to flower, I'll take some more and repeat the process again. This means having no mother.
> 
> ...



Ive read this question sooo many times... but im still gonna answer it...
Clones will never have problems that the original plant didnt have. its a clone... that means its the same plant, just growing on its own now. same genetics, unchanged forever.


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## dgk4life (Sep 6, 2009)

more then fine to repeat cloning on clones. the most important thing to remember is to choose your original mother plant wisely.. look for characteristics that u want ..high yeilder short height etc.... but no matter how times u clone a clone it is still the same genetic copy of the original plant


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## MrFishy (Sep 6, 2009)

I've been cloning the same re-veg clone for goin' on 3 years now and haven't noticed any degradation of the species. I'm probably on generation 25 with very healthy vegged plants.


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## whutever (Sep 6, 2009)

Hmm.. as far as I know plants have the same problems as humans.. but im not sure.. though a plant may have the same genetics, the DNA is always being damaged (failure when copying amino acids into DNA), but whilst still repairing itself it cant maintain the ratio of damage to "heal".. so the the longer the same DNA has been copied (cells) the less chance the plant will have of continuing its abilities such as fighting off mold, insects. etc.. its something that is studied right now on living organism were they try to stress a organism (mostly bacteria) to make it "heal" faster then its being damaged.. however im not sure how or if it applies to plants.. but still.. worth mentioning i think 

EDIT: Oh.. and btw., i don't know how long time it takes before a vital change is made!


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## YouGrowBoy (Sep 6, 2009)

So we have 3 people saying it's not a problem and 1 that says it could be.


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## erkelsgoo420 (Sep 6, 2009)

I'm with the one.. Its is unlikely however I have personally had them become depressed. Lack of vigor or potency or both. It kinda comes down to about every factor u can imagine. I am still doing this and it is working great with my strain but I can tell u sensi star (at least mine) only took 6 gens to depress. So to answer ur question. YES u can clone a clone and its not likely ull see any adverse effects BUT it IS POSSIBLE for things to go south. Something about a dna alteration or mutation or something I'm not botanist just speakin of personal experience


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## RickWhite (Sep 7, 2009)

whutever said:


> Hmm.. as far as I know plants have the same problems as humans.. but im not sure.. though a plant may have the same genetics, the DNA is always being damaged (failure when copying amino acids into DNA), but whilst still repairing itself it cant maintain the ratio of damage to "heal".. so the the longer the same DNA has been copied (cells) the less chance the plant will have of continuing its abilities such as fighting off mold, insects. etc.. its something that is studied right now on living organism were they try to stress a organism (mostly bacteria) to make it "heal" faster then its being damaged.. however im not sure how or if it applies to plants.. but still.. worth mentioning i think
> 
> EDIT: Oh.. and btw., i don't know how long time it takes before a vital change is made!


What you saying makes sense but it appears that plants don't have this problem. Understand however that you are referring to somatic DNA (that responsible for meiosis). Mitosis uses a perfect copy to produce offspring.

What seems to be the case with clones is that the plant regenerates from the original DNA just as in mitosis and produces a new born baby clone just as if it produced a seedling.

I think the technique of using somatic DNA caused this issue but it doesn't seem this applies to plant clones. Also, I don't think they even do that anymore. I could be wrong because it's been a long time since I last looked into it.

Anyway, I know a guy with a strain that is 5 years old and each cutting is like a brand new plant.


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## freddiemoney (Sep 8, 2009)

I've kept clones of clones for years, IMO the main factor to keeping the copies as close as possible to the original is lack of environmental stress to keep the major mutations away. Stressed one mother out pretty badly and never had another well-behaved clone generation after. Other 2-4 year old strains which didn't feel the squeeze are still rock solid.


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## RickWhite (Sep 8, 2009)

freddiemoney said:


> I've kept clones of clones for years, IMO the main factor to keeping the copies as close as possible to the original is lack of environmental stress to keep the major mutations away. Stressed one mother out pretty badly and never had another well-behaved clone generation after. Other 2-4 year old strains which didn't feel the squeeze are still rock solid.


You may have carried over a disease of some kind. Cloning is about as much stress as you can put on a plant.


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## iivan740 (Sep 8, 2009)

My opinion is that generational cloning in plants is a viable means of extending the life of the plant. There is such a thing as genetic drift within the plant world but for our purposes the likelyhood of seeing genetic drift in one of our plants is infinitesimal. I think infestations, disease, fungus, and infection will be more of a threat to your generational program than genetic drift.


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## hectorius (Sep 8, 2009)

ive heard 48 generations till they degrade, so if you get clones a guy then you dont know how manytimes thats been cloned but if you start from seed and then clone then i wouldnt worry till 40 plus generations.


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## Trevor (Sep 8, 2009)

In one of the recent high times (can't remember which, they are all stacked by my toilet) they said that clones will eventually start to lose vigor and potency when cloned for extended periods of time, but I have also heard of many people holding mothers or genetics for 4+ years. All in all, I'd say you are safe for a reasonable amount of time.


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## SlikWiLL13 (Sep 8, 2009)

hectorius said:


> ive heard 48 generations till they degrade, so if you get clones a guy then you dont know how manytimes thats been cloned but if you start from seed and then clone then i wouldnt worry till 40 plus generations.


48? that may be the most absurd thing ive heard all day. why not 47? or 52 for that matter? might it differ by strain or environment? or might it just be bullshit?


al b fuct claims to have been cloning off clones of the same mother for 9+ yrs.

i myself have run into some problems but im pretty sure its due to my taking a few clones a week of so into flower, then taking clones from them, then possibly taking more clones just into flowering. ive run into reoccuring hermie problems due to this and need to start with fresh seeds.


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## SlikWiLL13 (Sep 8, 2009)

Trevor said:


> In one of the recent high times (can't remember which, they are all stacked by my toilet) they said that clones will eventually start to lose vigor and potency when cloned for extended periods of time, but I have also heard of many people holding mothers or genetics for 4+ years. All in all, I'd say you are safe for a reasonable amount of time.


youve got those HT's right where they belong. now next time you grind one out, rip out a page and wipe because thats all its good for!


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## vapedg13 (Sep 9, 2009)

hectorius said:


> ive heard 48 generations till they degrade, so if you get clones a guy then you dont know how manytimes thats been cloned but if you start from seed and then clone then i wouldnt worry till 40 plus generations.


 
Thats a rediculous!!!!..............I have been cloning the same strain for over 18 yrs...the shit is still the bomb...I average 6 oz a plant

I pull starts 6 times a year ...never kept a mother plant... your looking at the 100+ generation of clone pulled ....18x6=108th gereration (clone of a clone of a clone 108 times)


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## Green Cross (Sep 9, 2009)

hectorius said:


> ive heard 48 generations till they degrade, so if you get clones a guy then you dont know how manytimes thats been cloned but if you start from seed and then clone then i wouldnt worry till 40 plus generations.


I've heard 300 times with no, genetic deterioration, but re-vegging mothers and taking clones in flower is quite a different story, 5 times and your yield suffers


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## Green Cross (Sep 9, 2009)

vapedg13 said:


> Thats a rediculous!!!!..............I have been cloning the same strain for over 18 yrs...the shit is still the bomb...I average 6 oz a plant
> 
> I pull starts 6 times a year ...never kept a mother plant... your looking at the 100+ generation of clone pulled ....18x6=108th gereration (clone of a clone of a clone 108 times)


Most people think their shit is "the bomb", but I think we have a winner!


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## vapedg13 (Sep 9, 2009)

Green Cross said:


> I've heard 300 times with no, genetic deterioration, but re-vegging mothers and taking clones in flower is quite a different story, 5 times and your yield suffers


 
300 times..... I wont see that in my lifetime ..... it took me 18 years to get to 108 times.

300 cycles of clones of clones.....thats like 50 years of growing the same strain pulling 6 different clone cycles a year


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## RickWhite (Sep 9, 2009)

I think that answers the question. That looks great BTW, Blueberry?

Obviously taking a clone is mainly if not completely a form of asexual mitotic propagation as opposed to a meiotic one so there is no degradation in DNA in general. Many organisms reproduce asexually, evidently plants posses this ability.


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## RickWhite (Sep 9, 2009)

Decided to look this up. Turns out my suspicion was correct. Cloning involves mitosis so it's no different than germinating a seed. You can read about it below. If you don't know the difference between meiosis and mitosis you can look that up too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragmentation_(reproduction)


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## YouGrowBoy (Sep 10, 2009)

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. It appears that as long as you have good clones, it's not a problem.

I did hear a rumor today that some breeders have been able to design a plant that will fail if cloned too many times. Sounds like science fiction to me, but I don't know.

YGB


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## born2killspam (Sep 10, 2009)

The answer is 42!
And don't forget a towel..


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## Eire (Oct 26, 2009)

I think the confusion here is that we are calling cuttins clones when they are not. A true clone is grown from one single cell and is manipulated to multiply and then differentiate to all the different kinds of cells. Because it starts with one single cell then there are higher chances that it will have genetic drift along the way. But when you start with a high population of cells that are already differentiated, and the new root cells will differentiate and grow from a group-effort by all the others, there is far less chance of drift. Then, since the roots come from a variety of cells, if one root strand has problems, it can die off and let the good ones keep growing, basically by the rules of natural selection -the ones that are healthy and work well beat out the bad ones. Only if you actually cloned the plants from a single cell would you worry about genetic drift, and even then not a lot because plants are also less complex than higher organisms (usually) and this means that there is not so much complexity to go wrong. 
So the answer is that you can clone plants forever because rooting a cutting is not really cloning. It is just an easy word to use and has become a commonly known label for the process of rooting cuttings.


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## joe900x (Oct 26, 2009)

Eire said:


> A true clone is grown from one single cell and is manipulated to multiply and then differentiate to all the different kinds of cells.


you're referring to animal clones, when you say this. since yes, animal clones do originate from one cell (usually a empty cell transplanted with genetic material)

a 'true' clone is a separate organism genetically identical to the parent, regardless of how it began. So a plant 'clone' is merely describing the sameness between both plants.

cloning plants is the same idea as planting potatoes or carrots. etc.


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## KP2 (Oct 26, 2009)

joe900x said:


> a 'true' clone is a separate organism genetically identical to the parent, regardless of how it began. So a plant 'clone' is merely describing the sameness between both plants.


identical, key word people 
/debate


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## Eire (Oct 26, 2009)

Yes, exactly. There is confusion between animal and plant cloning. Because we use the same word 'clone' in both cases, people do not realize there are differences. Problems that occur in animal cloning do not apply to plant cloning because they are not the same thing even though we use the same word to describe them. We could start calling plant clones 'duplicates' to indicate the difference, but that would require everyone to be on-board with the new terminology and that won't happen. So we must just realize that they are two separate things and say that to those who are confused.


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## PotPatriot (Oct 27, 2009)

I know that with plants there can be an Inbred Depression that will not show itself until 100's if not 1000's of generations of clone from the seed, I know this because my 91 year old Uncle was a breeder of potatoes and corn and wheat and soybeans, well you name it he bred it from around 1946 to present day. I do believe that if you were to clone a clone, and so on for 25 years you would have degradation of the basic cellular structure required to do its job properly and it would lose its vigor and potency and yield characteristics. 

I think people like to assume based on facts they saw in the latest sci-fi thriller about cloning, that it is infallible, which is not the case, a plant loses something on a cellular level every single time its cloned, I do not base this on any sort of science except for what I have witnessed or been a part of first hand, and that is plants do not clone themselves in nature, the species either inbreeds if possible or if left alone in the wild chances are it will pop its own seeds as a type of defense mechanism to ensure the species is continued, if you ever have the patience and yield to experiment, try letting any strain completely mature and die on the stalk...chances are you will find seeds on the outermost edges if your strain has any hint of landrace or ruderalis genetics in it.


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## growone (Oct 27, 2009)

PotPatriot said:


> I know that with plants there can be an Inbred Depression that will not show itself until 100's if not 1000's of generations of clone from the seed, I know this because my 91 year old Uncle was a breeder of potatoes and corn and wheat and soybeans, well you name it he bred it from around 1946 to present day. I do believe that if you were to clone a clone, and so on for 25 years you would have degradation of the basic cellular structure required to do its job properly and it would lose its vigor and potency and yield characteristics.
> 
> I think people like to assume based on facts they saw in the latest sci-fi thriller about cloning, that it is infallible, which is not the case, a plant loses something on a cellular level every single time its cloned, I do not base this on any sort of science except for what I have witnessed or been a part of first hand, and that is plants do not clone themselves in nature, the species either inbreeds if possible or if left alone in the wild chances are it will pop its own seeds as a type of defense mechanism to ensure the species is continued, if you ever have the patience and yield to experiment, try letting any strain completely mature and die on the stalk...chances are you will find seeds on the outermost edges if your strain has any hint of landrace or ruderalis genetics in it.


love the thread, cloning is a good term, but i believe it's more accurate to describe as vegetative reproduction
many plants can reproduce vegetatively, including some noxious weeds
raspberry plants reproduce vegetatively, the tips of their canes droop until they touch the ground, then they root to form a new plant
i've seen many growers that clone their clone their clone...
for practical purposes, it does seem like you can keep cloning that treasured femme for a very long time


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## Eire (Oct 27, 2009)

Very good and interesting points. I'm not sure too many MJ growers are worried about what hapens 25 years out rather than over the next few. But you make a good point about the repercussions of long-term repetitive damage to plants such as cloning. I wonder if the same issues would appear if I repeatedly and violently damaged the same plant over a long period of time, especially the same part every time such as the roots when cloning. It also brings up the question of telomere length and whether the MJ plant could last long enough to show such issues, and how much of it is caused by the act of cloning and how much is due to the combination of age and repetitive damage to the same part of the plant over time. So I also wonder if the same issues would occur of you were to clone the same mother repetitively over a long time rather than cloning a clone repetitively. That is the real question anyway, is it definitively worse to clone a clone rather than clone the same mother over time? In any case, while you make great points I am not completely convinced that the degradation can be totally ascribed to repetitive cloning alone.


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## marvinev (Oct 27, 2009)

but wait what if you clone from a plant during harvest time i cloned one with a hairy bud on it, now its only growing with three leaves and it seems to have 3 main stocks,


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## KP2 (Oct 28, 2009)

marvinev said:


> but wait what if you clone from a plant during harvest time i cloned one with a hairy bud on it, now its only growing with three leaves and it seems to have 3 main stocks,


those are sucker branches. after growing out of that stage, you'll be able to take pretty and healthy cuttings.


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## just for the magic (Oct 30, 2009)

vapedg13 said:


> Thats a rediculous!!!!..............I have been cloning the same strain for over 18 yrs...the shit is still the bomb...I average 6 oz a plant
> 
> I pull starts 6 times a year ...never kept a mother plant... your looking at the 100+ generation of clone pulled ....18x6=108th gereration (clone of a clone of a clone 108 times)


um... r u sure that strain is 18yrs old? looks kinda funky and a newish type hybrid to me


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## vapedg13 (Oct 30, 2009)

just for the magic said:


> um... r u sure that strain is 18yrs old? looks kinda funky and a newish type hybrid to me


Yes it is.... actually its older than that..... I been growing it personally since 1992....It was growing years before I got it as a clone.....its never been bred with anything


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## just for the magic (Oct 30, 2009)

^ awesome, she sure is a darlin'. I think its just me gettin old i suppose.


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## xogenic (Oct 30, 2009)

i do it all the time and had no problems but sometimes you can get a dodgy plant but aslong as you keep taking the clones of the best of the clones then the clones should clone fine .... CLONE!!


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## Troyboy (Oct 30, 2009)

vapedg13 said:


> Thats a rediculous!!!!..............I have been cloning the same strain for over 18 yrs...the shit is still the bomb...I average 6 oz a plant
> 
> I pull starts 6 times a year ...never kept a mother plant... your looking at the 100+ generation of clone pulled ....18x6=108th gereration (clone of a clone of a clone 108 times)


Thats some pretty looking buds... and yeh a clone(cutting) is just a continuation(rejuvenated) of the original plant as someone else said.. and if we look at the evolutionary cycle of life itself......it takes hundreds of thousands of years for any major changes in DNA to take place.... a mutation would only really happen to a plant or 2..not the whole lot... Nobody EXPECTS 100% rooting from clones anyway. 
I have 2 schools of thought really on this one....
1. Keep it simple...keep it CLEAN....keep it QUIET!!...weed out the weak ones(ie only clone from the strongest/healthiest plants)
2. Dont grow yourself into a corner!!!
I dont smoke weed(please dont hate me) The enjoyment I get from just growing/OCD cloning(yeh I have a problem...just cant throw anything with a few nodes out)/building new grow areas/experimenting/fine tuning/admiring their new growth coz i havent seen them for 2 days(plus a $$$ bonus at the end) is why I love this hobby. I want to do other projects like buying seeds/clones of other strains, cross breeding to better the end product(some may fall a bit short of expectation) therefore leaving my options open should anything ever fail with my current serious grow.... plus the 'customers' will always be happy just because theyre getting the best gunj in town!!



PotPatriot said:


> I know that with plants there can be an Inbred Depression that will not show itself until 100's if not 1000's of generations of clone from the seed, I know this because my 91 year old Uncle was a breeder of potatoes and corn and wheat and soybeans, well you name it he bred it from around 1946 to present day. I do believe that if you were to clone a clone, and so on for 25 years you would have degradation of the basic cellular structure required to do its job properly and it would lose its vigor and potency and yield characteristics.
> 
> I think people like to assume based on facts they saw in the latest sci-fi thriller about cloning, that it is infallible, which is not the case, a plant loses something on a cellular level every single time its cloned, *I do not base this on any sort of science except for what I have witnessed or been a part of first hand, and that is plants do not clone themselves in nature*, the species either inbreeds if possible or if left alone in the wild chances are it will pop its own seeds as a type of defense mechanism to ensure the species is continued, if you ever have the patience and yield to experiment, try letting any strain completely mature and die on the stalk...chances are you will find seeds on the outermost edges if your strain has any hint of landrace or ruderalis genetics in it.


As for not cloning themselves in the wild... a very broad statement, have a look at *Ficus Benjamina...* a pretty but shockingly pain in the ass tree that will put roots under your house and destroy your foundations....this tree drops heaps of leaves, a perfect self mulcher, mega shade causes nice moist soil under it, and if any fallen branch has green on it, it WILL shoot roots and form a happy little tree next to it... I used to be a tree surgeon and we had to keep the ficus chippings separate from our other dump piles because it takes soooo long for it to break down to the point it wont try and grow itself!!

I suppose what I was trying to say at the start of this is... Nothing beats a nice chat about our interests while we're waiting for them to grow but be careful what we tell people without any actual proven fact......but now that Ive finally finishing crapping on about part of my favourite hobby, I think it doesnt hurt to have a chat/read/contemplate/consider, maybe even pick up the odd tip(btw thanks all) but hopefully nobody is stupid enough to base an entire crop on 1 persons opinion.....aaaaaaaaaaaagh imagine the devastation

Enjoy the journey,
Troyboy


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## mindphuk (Oct 30, 2009)

born2killspam said:


> The answer is 42!
> And don't forget a towel..


+1
LOL!

Seriously people, there are some roses that have been cloned for centuries. Any degradation that growers have experienced has to do with the mother plant itself or growing conditions and has nothing to do with a breakdown at the genetic level.


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## just for the magic (Oct 31, 2009)

personally, i know less than fuck all on most matters relating to gardening. So...is it just a myth that has been perpetuated by uneducated(on the subject) folk? I remember a friend of mine not cloning after 4-5 crops because he stubbornly held the belief that degradation was inevitable. I remember the nobber waiting a year for more clones to come. In his defence, great info sites like this were not around back then........ I am fucking old


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## Big Bear (Oct 31, 2009)

With everthing going could use to new clones need great diesil or ak4y clone appreciate Help or weld pay for coculting fee
Eskimo Bear


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## momndadh8u11 (Nov 3, 2009)

i lost purple in y urple doin that.


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## Eire (Nov 3, 2009)

Yeah, cloning is great. I wouldn't worry about it. I just got a NL clone and will use it as my mo until it gets too scraggly from cutting. Then I'll swap it with one of it's clones and continue. I'm confident I'll be fine for years or decades to come.


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## donkeyote (Nov 4, 2009)

just for the magic said:


> personally, i know less than fuck all on most matters relating to gardening. So...is it just a myth that has been perpetuated by uneducated(on the subject) folk? I remember a friend of mine not cloning after 4-5 crops because he stubbornly held the belief that degradation was inevitable. I remember the nobber waiting a year for more clones to come. In his defence, great info sites like this were not around back then........ I am fucking old


You might lose some vigor by using the same mother plant for too long, but when you take a healthy clone it's like resetting a stopwatch to zero. You are starting from scratch with that particular genetic sequence. Every time.

With the new advances in tissue cultures, all you need now is a few milligrams of living plant matter to grow a full plant that is an identical genetic copy.

If a clone, or line of clones goes bad, it's a 99.9% chance that it's due to environmental conditions, and not from some sort of genetic drift.


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## Drr (Feb 4, 2010)

your not starting from scratch with a clone.... the cutting is the same age as the mother or clone is.. or was..


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## tinyTURTLE (Feb 4, 2010)

i've seen plants that were clones from a mother grown in 1993 or 94.
this was in 2009. thats 15-16 years of the same clone. healthy, mold and mildew resistant
and strong as ever.


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## Go Go Ganja! (Feb 4, 2010)

i read somewhere that you can take a clone of a clone for about 50 or generations b4 they experience genetic drift...but that is just hear say


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## MT Marijuana (Feb 4, 2010)

SlikWiLL13 said:


> 48? that may be the most absurd thing ive heard all day. why not 47? or 52 for that matter? might it differ by strain or environment? or might it just be bullshit?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## growone (Feb 4, 2010)

Go Go Ganja! said:


> i read somewhere that you can take a clone of a clone for about 50 or generations b4 they experience genetic drift...but that is just hear say


i think this stems from a Cervantes(spelling?) statement from his book
claimed genetic drift will pop up after some # of generations
thing is, never seen how you would test for such a thing
someone has a problem with a clone after some period of time, then says 'genetic drift'
is there even a test for genetic drift?


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## Single White Pistol (Feb 4, 2010)

just for the magic said:


> um... r u sure that strain is 18yrs old? looks kinda funky and a newish type hybrid to me


I didn't know we had weed like that 18 years ago.


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## figtree (Feb 4, 2010)

RickWhite said:


> What you saying makes sense but it appears that plants don't have this problem. Understand however that you are referring to somatic DNA (that responsible for meiosis). Mitosis uses a perfect copy to produce offspring.
> 
> What seems to be the case with clones is that the plant regenerates from the original DNA just as in mitosis and produces a new born baby clone just as if it produced a seedling.
> 
> ...


I was thinking about this the past few days and........................ you took the words right out of my brain...

I came to the conclusion that people use the word clone loosely when refering to plants because, of observing a banyan tree, remembering strawberries are propogated with runners (seeds arent good for strawberry propogation), and the old spider plant i have hangin around. all of these basically clone themselves, if the genes degraded with multiple cloning why would this be their natural means of propogation/reproduction?

Good stuff rick!
fig


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## figtree (Feb 4, 2010)

Troyboy said:


> Thats some pretty looking buds... and yeh a clone(cutting) is just a continuation(rejuvenated) of the original plant as someone else said.. and if we look at the evolutionary cycle of life itself......it takes hundreds of thousands of years for any major changes in DNA to take place.... a mutation would only really happen to a plant or 2..not the whole lot... Nobody EXPECTS 100% rooting from clones anyway.
> I have 2 schools of thought really on this one....
> 1. Keep it simple...keep it CLEAN....keep it QUIET!!...weed out the weak ones(ie only clone from the strongest/healthiest plants)
> 2. Dont grow yourself into a corner!!!
> ...


just went back to read the rest and.....

THEY DO! i agree and have seen it, plants do clone themselves in nature. my last post.... talks about 3 examples self cloning for sure.


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## greensister (Feb 5, 2010)

figtree said:


> I was thinking about this the past few days and........................ you took the words right out of my brain...
> 
> I came to the conclusion that people use the word clone loosely when refering to plants because, of observing a banyan tree, remembering strawberries are propogated with runners (seeds arent good for strawberry propogation), and the old spider plant i have hangin around. all of these basically clone themselves, if the genes degraded with multiple cloning why would this be their natural means of propogation/reproduction?
> 
> ...


Wandering Jew, IVY, and lots of other plants use asexual reproduction as their primary means of propgation. For plants like that, there wouldnt be much "genetic drift" because the plants already drifted to the cloning side. I think its call evolution.

I also have a theory that longer lived organisms have a greater propensity to evolve. Annuals are pretty short lived, esp for plants so when you keep one alive via clones, you are in uncharted evolutionary waters, that, dammit, legit research should be done on!


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## stonerbeans (Feb 5, 2010)

ive always wondered the same thing and i think it shouldn't matter, although a few years ago i heard from somewhere (and this is just hear say) that a plant can only be cloned like 30 gens and then they start to lose potency... Just through the grapevine...


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## figtree (Feb 5, 2010)

greensister said:


> Wandering Jew, IVY, and lots of other plants use asexual reproduction as their primary means of propgation. For plants like that, there wouldnt be much "genetic drift" because the plants already drifted to the cloning side. I think its call evolution.
> 
> I also have a theory that longer lived organisms have a greater propensity to evolve. Annuals are pretty short lived, esp for plants so when you keep one alive via clones, you are in uncharted evolutionary waters, that, dammit, legit research should be done on!


Yes, i also feel that maybe the lack of vigor and potency that people are talking about may boil down to thier plant micro eveolving in their grow room?, getting used to lower light levels than our sun, different environment, different nutrients, ect..... because if the genes were breaking down, or the dna strings wearing out, wouldnt it affect more genes than just vigor and potency? wouldnt it affect everything about the plant?

Oh boy, we opened up the evolution door here........ some dont beleive in it. But i do.
Fig


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## greensister (Feb 5, 2010)

I think its so utterly complicated that we wont have an actual concrete answer for a long long time. We dont even know what genes do what really.

Perhaps vigor and potency are the weakest links and thus adversly effected more than the other properties of the plant. I also dont believe in good or evil so what do i know?


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## burninjay (Feb 5, 2010)

When a cell replicates, there's always a chance that something will go wrong and the genetics will not be copied perfectly. Logic would say that the further away from seed you get, the more chances the DNA has to make a bad copy.
If you take a clone from a mother, then a clone from that clone and so on, it's basic common sense to say that you have a better chance of some changes along the way than a clone of the original mother. 
That being said, there is no rule that says a mutation has to be bad. IMO, there's just as good a chance that genetic drift down the line could cause a desirable effect as there is undesirable.


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## isthislegal (Apr 2, 2010)

Single White Pistol said:


> I didn't know we had weed like that 18 years ago.


you have obviously forgotten your towel...


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## RickWhite (Apr 2, 2010)

There are things that can degrade a strain over time - I have seen it. I do not know if it is the result of mutation, which is possible, or a matter of the plant picking up various diseases. While an experienced grower might be able to carry a strain for many generations, a single mistake like allowing a little root rot to occur will forever degrade your strain. I have seen a strain go from near 100% cloning success to about 30%. The ones that do make it do well though. Biology is complicated stuff.


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## growone (Apr 2, 2010)

RickWhite said:


> There are things that can degrade a strain over time - I have seen it. I do not know if it is the result of mutation, which is possible, or a matter of the plant picking up various diseases. While an experienced grower might be able to carry a strain for many generations, a single mistake like allowing a little root rot to occur will forever degrade your strain. I have seen a strain go from near 100% cloning success to about 30%. The ones that do make it do well though. Biology is complicated stuff.


interesting answer, seems to be credible observation and you don't try to pin it on a exact cause, +rep
i've got a nl#5 that i've taken 2 generations, but would like to keep her for much longer


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## terrorizer805 (Apr 2, 2010)

Same genetics every single time, shit does not degrade over time. 
you are not actually cloning using plant cells, you are snipping a branch off and rooting it.
You will get the same genetic backround 2 years 5 years later it's all the same.


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## homebrewer (Apr 3, 2010)

A clone of a clone of a clone of a clone......is not the best way to operate. While it sounds like people do it, it's a lot easier to have a mom.


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## growone (Apr 4, 2010)

^^^no argument there
for me, just don't have the stealth/space to keep a mom
maybe if NY gets MMJ


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