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

[momndadh8u11]

i lost purple in y urple doin that.

 

[Eire]

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.

 

[donkeyote]

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.

 

[Drr]

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

 

[tinyTURTLE]

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.

 

[Go Go Ganja!]

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

 

[MT Marijuana]

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?




46+2=48... lol

 

[growone]

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?

 

[Single White Pistol]

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.

 

[figtree]

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.

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

 

[figtree]

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!!



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

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.

 

[greensister]

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

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!

 

[stonerbeans]

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...

 

[figtree]

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

 

[greensister]

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?

 

[burninjay]

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.

 

[isthislegal]

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

you have obviously forgotten your towel...

 

[RickWhite]

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.

 

[growone]

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

 

[terrorizer805]

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.