is it true that when you take a clone the potency gets weaker every time you clone?

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GrowUsome

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is it true that when you take a clone the potency gets weaker every time you clone?
 
i've had strains that i started from seed and took clones for 2+ years and didn't notice any decline potency.... the SourJack i'm growing right now has been cloned repeatedly for almost 3 years with zero decline in potency.... i've started mothers from clones many times and haven't noticed a difference yet....
 
they say there is a genetic drift....but I have never noticed it
 
this is a vary good question. I hear it from other growers and I hear it from dealers. I hear it alot, but If I dont read it some where creditable or see from eye witness-side-by-side comparison, I just throw it in the catagory of hearsay jiberish. I would like to hear from all growers of all mediums of all methods so we can make our final judgment.
 
he may be asking the same thing i just asked the other day that if he took clones then flower the mother the repeate keep clones then take new fresh cuttings then flower the biger ones angain is that what you are reffering too ??
 
no it doesnt decline it is a genetic copy.
 
Regeneration of a MJ plant from season to season for several years caused a degeneration in potency so an old member told me. (Puffin)

But it is the same plant from day 1.

Cuttings are as identical as the mother.

Does this mean a cutting of a cutting of a cutting will not do the same?

I think Genetic drift is a realty, more disagree with the idea than agree though.

:peace:
 
Hi,

I've always wondered who "they" were you hear that "They say there can be genetic drift." I totally respect HIE's personal opinion on the subject and I miss not having Puffin around anymore but in my 15 years of growing and cloning pot plants I've never noticed any decline in quality or dankness in a strain that I've had going for many years. I recently got back into growing after a lengthy hiatus so I've only had my current strains about 8 months or less but many years ago I had some strains from around '94 until 2002 and I cloned them repeatedly for years. In the 8 years I had cloned and grown many strains and they all seem to actually get a bit better for the first several grows and then the quality levels off and stays more consistent. But this probably has more to do with me learning a strain's tendencies and needs during the previous grows and over time tweaking things into my perception of perfection. Unfortunately due to work travel I had to let all of those go but such is life out here on the front lines of the War on Drugs...

I have such a limited veg space that I never keep the original mothers. I take a clone and put the 'mother' either into flower or destroy it when they get too big for my veg closet. The rooted clone is then given the responsibility of continuing the genetics in my grow. When that rooted clone, aka mommy/daughter gets to a desire flowering size and/or is too big for my veg closet I'll do it all over again.... And clone the cloned clone that has been cloned from a cloned clone. Roger that? :rolleyes: I'll occasionally grow from seed to get a new desired strain into my grow but clones are SO much easier and faster. Growing from seed is akin to reinventing the wheel IME... All at once fascinating and somewhat of a PITA...:hubba:

Peace!:cool:
 
Ok, genetic drift is basically a myth, a clone is a genetic replicate of the plant it was taken from.

That being said, clones will decrease in potency over time. The reason is, every grow that plant will invariably encounter some form of stress that will slightly weaken her genetics. Now that may not be a big deal in one grow from start to finish, but over time it will add up and become apparent. I have read some really great articles citing this, and also some great articles disproving genetic drift but the articles that disproved genetic drift weren't talking about potency of a marijuana plant, it was talking about bacteria in a perfect lab setting.

If this is true, the less stress you put on a plant the more generations you should be able to get. The opposite would apply to plants under a lot of stress, theoretically they should degrade much more rapidly. Do a few searches on google, I haven't looked in a while but I remember reading quite a bit about this, and to the best of my memory, this is the info I remember reading.
 
i have been clonning the same strain for 18 months, maybe 6 or 7
generations and as i get better so does the smoke, im sure ppl have
done much more than that, what about clone only strains.
 
dman1234 said:
i have been clonning the same strain for 18 months, maybe 6 or 7
generations and as i get better so does the smoke, im sure ppl have
done much more than that, what about clone only strains.
I would imagine that a lot of clone only strains are not flowered out and cloned constantly, more than likely a mother is kept when available. I would also imagine that most people that have clone only strains are keeping them in near ideal conditions to help insure the survival of that strain, and not constantly flowering it and risking the clones not growing well.

Also, your strains are almost certainly weakening, but you are better at growing them so you are more than compensating for the slight degradation. It is 100% impossible for a clone to be more potent than it's mother if grown in the same conditions. Your just dialing in her exact needs through previous experience.

If I remember correctly, a noticeable loss in potency becomes very apparent around the 16th generation or so. Again, this isn't my research but instead research I read about on various websites/science journals. I don't grow like that, I grow from seed until I find a plant I really like, then I clone it once and keep that clone as a mother.

At the rate you are going(7th gen in 18 months), and if the 16th gen decline is accurate, you should start to see a noticeable decline in about two years, lol. I'm going to go do some research here in a little bit, this has re-piqued my interest. I'll see if I can't find some info I can cite resources from and get some exact science.
 
i can see how regenerating, as in re-vegging after flowering, a plant repeatedly can degrade the quality.... but for clones, i think it would possibly take many, many generations for the quality to degrade....

Jorge says in his grow bible that he's known people who've taken over 20 generations of clones from the same plants with no degradation in quality or potency....
 
cadlakmike1 said:
Ok, genetic drift is basically a myth, a clone is a genetic replicate of the plant it was taken from.

That being said, clones will decrease in potency over time.

dman1234 said:
i have been clonning the same strain for 18 months, maybe 6 or 7
generations and as i get better so does the smoke, im sure ppl have
done much more than that, what about clone only strains.

Are these not examples of genetic drifting?

I'm only talking how my mind is working, I blame that damn AK47 Auto :p

If drift is a myth, how is this happening?

What causes the decline or raise in the plants performance compared to the original genes?

Hey, I'm no botanist, It's just an interesting subject to try to get your mind around :)

:peace:
 
HIE, I agree with you that in time cloning a clone will decrease potency, but not with your choice of words using "genetic drift". You quoted me out of context. The next line I wrote was why I felt there was a degradation in quality, and my explanation had nothing to do with randomness or chance, it was solely based on the health of the donor plant. I believe that if you have the ability to grow in perfect conditions, and expose the plant to no stress, you can clone on inevitably. Most people don't have the ability to do that, so they stress the plant and weaken the genes. I know I stated earlier that after X amount of generations a plant will lose potency, but the more I think about it the less I agree with it, I remember reading it but I can't remember the reasoning so I'm not sure I want to buy into something I can't defend. I do believe in some aspects of genetic drift(I wish those aspects would not all be lumped together with one term though) but not applied to marijuana and cloning.
 
cadlakmike1 said:
I believe that if you have the ability to grow in perfect conditions, and expose the plant to no stress, you can clone on inevitably. Most people don't have the ability to do that, so they stress the plant and weaken the genes.

from my experience, i agree 100%!
 
THIS IS ALL ANECDOTAL SO OF COURSE NO PICS WILL EQUAL NO PROOF, but...

We could trace our skunk strain 15 yrs back and from the person my immediate circle got it I couldn't tell ya how long he was growing it.

IT DID INDEED DESTABILIZED :( , either through some sort of unexpressed defficiency on the plants part, a growers f up, or maybe some sort of NUTE LOCKOUT SITUATION. NOTE: I had taken a brk from growin at this point cuz I was sick of being home all the time. and no, I don't trust ANYONE to watch my girlz.

Here's a rhetorical question...what happens to a copy of a copy? ...looks fine right...yeah lil fuzzy but fine nonetheless. Now take a copy and copy copy copy copy year over year over year over years. You wont be able to recognize the original anymore...thats what happened to one of my most kick *** strains around my state/province/republic/whatever...

When I found out our girl friday was no more, I felt a loss almost as interminably profound as a family member dying...serious, not trying to b funny

my 2 cents take it for whaT ITS WORTH but i'm sure ppl on here will tell me i'm wrong...ask any professional longtime breeder and they will say there's an expiration date to ANY cannabis plant.

And the term "genetic drift" or variance is reserved for one seedling to another from the same seed batch...not a xerox of a xerox....

Peace

7greeneyes :D

p.s. Hybrid Vigor Loss had the characteristics of making the plant long and spindly, Vegetative smell from stem went from the skunk to a citric (for skunk thats odd) and the flowering ripening period extended for twice the amount of time and no potency to what lil buds did develop.
 
I didn't mean to quote out of context :)

Just an interesting concept.

DNA breaks down, that is why we get old and die.

That is why things evolve, genes change because of the genes passed by aged DNA.

This will be interesting to dig into and research.

Be assured I will come back in a few months and post something ;)

:peace:
 
HippyInEngland said:
I didn't mean to quote out of context :)

Just an interesting concept.

DNA breaks down, that is why we get old and die.

That is why things evolve, genes change because of the genes passed by aged DNA.

This will be interesting to dig into and research.

Be assured I will come back in a few months and post something ;)

:peace:
No harm done, you just missed my point by leaving off the next sentence.

Definition of genetic drift: Alteration in gene frequencies that usually occurs in a small population and results from chance processes alone, not from natural selection, mutations, or immigration.

That is why I don't believe it is the correct term here. If you took 50 clones from a plant, and a few showed some odd variance, that could be chalked up as genetic drift. Genetic drift is usually applied in variations from parent's to offspring, not in clones. If you took 10 clone, and then took it to 100 generations later and all those clones exhibited the same degradation, that is an entirely different phenomenon. I'm not sure why this term is so commonly used in reference to this though.
 
Great thread! Some really interesting comments here. Thanks guys, it was an enjoyable read.

Always great when a group of people can offer differing opinions or perspectives and not degnerate into anything less. Much rspect to everyone who posted!
 

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