Looks off the charts nice. What consderations are giving for potency via mom plants.
Potency is first. Of course secondary considerations of vigor, terps, etc matter, but why bother otherwise right?
So the issue of rapid phenotyping is time. It would be great to hold all these seedlings for another year and run them again to see if any fully matured into something better. But practically we can't.
A plants bloom room performance changes as the mom ages.
There is certainly plenty of controversy in this subject. My personal experience has been that buzz and flavors CAN intensify up to a couple years old. It plateaus for 5 to 8 years, and then starts to trail off.
Young plants tend to get better potency not worse. I have had young plants change their flavor for worse, but not power. Old plants will fade and it can be quite dramatic and traumatic!
After all we are forcing an organism to live for a decade or longer that started with a full lifecycle of 9 months. One of the reasons you need to breed your best when you get a chance, and keep your clone mother generations to a minimum.
Mom selection as early as possible can lose a potential late bloomer. My process to select the best contestant is to use a panel of experienced judges for the smoke test. Lab results come second. We test everything here in Michigan, but everyone knows that the rap sheet doesn't tell the whole story.
The crappy ugly duckling weed story does happen. But if you start with Swans and the best genetics possible, your odds are better.
Thank you for your interest.
-al