I think it's worth pointing out that the bugs and non-sterile utensils are the vector, not the cause. The only 'infection' that can can permanently alter the plant's DNA is a virus, at least as far as I know.
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Clone of a Clone of a... Degredation Experiment
- Thread starter Regulator Dave
- Start date
I think it's worth pointing out that the bugs and non-sterile utensils are the vector, not the cause. The only 'infection' that can can permanently alter the plant's DNA is a virus, at least as far as I know.
I have gotten my hands on original cuts of several very old clone only strains. Chem D and HP13. Both exhibited signs of degradation. the Chem D had very little vigor and was near imposible to clone without an areo cloner (which i purchased for this strain specifically). the chem 4 that i also had rooted very easily and had much more vigor. I understand that chem 4 and chem d are different, but they are essentially just different phenos of the same strain. IMO the chem d lost its vigor and ability to clone easily over the years. there really is no telling what that plant has been through sense it was first popped from seed so many years ago.
the HP13 i got had almost no vigor. it had to be veged twice as long as all of my other strains to finish with the same size and yield. the buds were very impressive and a very unique smell. I suspect this cut may have been infected with a virus, and i got rid of it because i didn't want to infect my other plants.
with that said i still dont believe that genetics degrade from taking clones of clone (or any other reason). i have done it for many years with some of my strains with no ill effect.
IMO what happens, which many people think is degradation of genes, is dispersion of hormones and other chemicals inside the plant. When cuts are taken from a mother plant they will grow with less vigor then a plant grown from seed. this is because plants from seed are packed with the hormones and chemicals they need to complete there life cycle. if a plant is kept in veg for a long time, and cuts are taken for several generations, these chemicals and hormones slowly get spent out (it takes a long time). this is why plants like my chem d, which now has very little rooting hormones left, wont root very easily. I dont think that this is something you have to worry about unless your strain is 10+ years old from seed, or has been put through tremendous amounts of stress over the years.
In my experience reveged plants suffer more dramatically from a loss or dispersion of hormones. I have never reveged a strain and felt that it gave me the same vigor or yield that it did previous to the reveg. the buds however were always of the same quality. the exception to this would probably be with strains that have some genetic roots to landraces the reveg in the wild and live for several years.
I also believe that any stress causes hormones to disperse more rapidly.
I say hormones for lack of all of the proper terms. This type of degradation/dispersion includes hormones but may also include non hormonal chemicals. Im sure some one who knows more about plant hormones and enzymes and stuff could better explain what is occurring, but i am positive that it is not genetic drift or degradation.
the HP13 i got had almost no vigor. it had to be veged twice as long as all of my other strains to finish with the same size and yield. the buds were very impressive and a very unique smell. I suspect this cut may have been infected with a virus, and i got rid of it because i didn't want to infect my other plants.
with that said i still dont believe that genetics degrade from taking clones of clone (or any other reason). i have done it for many years with some of my strains with no ill effect.
IMO what happens, which many people think is degradation of genes, is dispersion of hormones and other chemicals inside the plant. When cuts are taken from a mother plant they will grow with less vigor then a plant grown from seed. this is because plants from seed are packed with the hormones and chemicals they need to complete there life cycle. if a plant is kept in veg for a long time, and cuts are taken for several generations, these chemicals and hormones slowly get spent out (it takes a long time). this is why plants like my chem d, which now has very little rooting hormones left, wont root very easily. I dont think that this is something you have to worry about unless your strain is 10+ years old from seed, or has been put through tremendous amounts of stress over the years.
In my experience reveged plants suffer more dramatically from a loss or dispersion of hormones. I have never reveged a strain and felt that it gave me the same vigor or yield that it did previous to the reveg. the buds however were always of the same quality. the exception to this would probably be with strains that have some genetic roots to landraces the reveg in the wild and live for several years.
I also believe that any stress causes hormones to disperse more rapidly.
I say hormones for lack of all of the proper terms. This type of degradation/dispersion includes hormones but may also include non hormonal chemicals. Im sure some one who knows more about plant hormones and enzymes and stuff could better explain what is occurring, but i am positive that it is not genetic drift or degradation.
this is untrue DNA mutates almost constantly
and the dude is talking about Senescence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senescence
i think we will probably find two converging parabolic effects of age
the parabola of age vs yield which i predict will peak first around 1 year of age
and the parabola of age vs potency which i have no prediction for the peak of but could be as high as 20 years.
mrblue I also had a tired clone of the d, mosaic looking,hard to clone, that was more than three years ago and its as healthy as any plant I have ever seen roots in 7 days yields huge, No more signs of tmv,throw your mom outside clone it throw it outside again clone it all the vigor will probably return, works on all sick clones.
Thanks to RD for getting this going, good topic to explore. The loss of vigor is the only real drawback i see to cuttings, but its traded for consistency. I like both, to each their own and thanks to everybody guarding the genes and keeping them backed up! You never know when you might need them back...NS
kstampy
Member
I have never seen degradation of clones in my time, his ogre mother is in a pretty crappy environment but lots of air flow/ventilation, hot temps, no rh control, Always has some level of mites and its always way over grown never maintained hes just a long time grower that doesn't have much time to put in to the room but hey it works for him. So definitely not the healthiest plants or best room. I took 3 small mothers from him and by now i'm easily on my 40th-50th generation of clones. I replace my mothers a lot. My buds come out better, I get more weight than him and plants look healthier overall.
mdk ktm
Member
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=196296
This guys opinion is that his 20 year old williams wonder is the best plant ever.
And thanks for starting this thread op, I love learning new shit! And I really think the hormones play a role. And I think alot has to do with the health of the clone, I have had shitty bottom branch clones grow alot slower and not resemble the plant it came off of. I love popping seeds though, evaluating different phenotypes and finding your favorite is quite fun.
This guys opinion is that his 20 year old williams wonder is the best plant ever.
And thanks for starting this thread op, I love learning new shit! And I really think the hormones play a role. And I think alot has to do with the health of the clone, I have had shitty bottom branch clones grow alot slower and not resemble the plant it came off of. I love popping seeds though, evaluating different phenotypes and finding your favorite is quite fun.
mdk ktm
Member
I have never seen degradation of clones in my time, his ogre mother is in a pretty crappy environment but lots of air flow/ventilation, hot temps, no rh control, Always has some level of mites and its always way over grown never maintained hes just a long time grower that doesn't have much time to put in to the room but hey it works for him. So definitely not the healthiest plants or best room. I took 3 small mothers from him and by now i'm easily on my 40th-50th generation of clones. I replace my mothers a lot. My buds come out better, I get more weight than him and plants look healthier overall.
40-50th generation! damn! 40+ grows of one strain, you must like that strain alot. What strain is it? Im guessing some sort of diesel
there are growers on here that can vouch that i have genetics that are 20+ years old and still rocking the dank when they are ran....clone after clone after clone after clone ad infinitum
kstampy
Member
40-50th generation! damn! 40+ grows of one strain, you must like that strain alot. What strain is it? Im guessing some sort of diesel
Ogre is a special Sensi Star pheno. Very fuely/lemony. I don't have 40-50 grows under my belt 'yet' but that's about how far along I am clone generation wise I suppose. A good 15 cuts over a couple of months and then room was made for another mother in a rotation. This was the best way for me to get constant 8-9" clones with 1/4" thick+ stems. I find mothers that are kept longer don't have the vigor that fresh new cuttings have so I give my thanks and replace them often.
Just my experience.Regulator Dave
Member
An interesting idea of Time - Stress
An interesting idea of Time - Stress
I found this publication @
http://www.springerlink.com/content/7af70m83vd7jrtvg/
You can download the .pdf or view the HTML
Do green plants age, and if so how?
6.5 Genetics and epigenetics of plant ageing
6.5.1 Time and entropy
"In engineering, the term stress describes an environmental factor which, when applied to an object or system, invokes a corresponding strain. Biologists have requisitioned the concept of stress and used it, not always very fastidiously, to describe
the experience of non-optimal environments by living organisms. In a sense, time is a stress, though it differs from all other stresses in that, except at absolute zero, it is always present.
Even when all controllable environmental influences are fixed
or excluded, time accumulates as thermal time. Ageing is the biological response to time-stress. The physiology of individuals and their substructures is envisaged as reacting to non-optimal environments by invoking specific stress genes, stress
160 Howard Thomas proteins, and stress metabolites. By the same token, it could be argued that ageing expresses the activities of time-stress genes and their products (Thomas 1994).
Viable organisms and their components can adopt any of three different strate-gies to deal with environmental stress: avoidance, resistance, or exploitation.Therophytes (Cannabis) (Table 1) are stress-avoiders, whereas phanerophytes survive by resisting stress. All plants exploit stress to some degree or other for example low
seasonal temperature is used for time-measurement by winter dormant structures such as seeds and buds. Indeed, many or even most plants are absolutely dependent on environmental deviations from optimality to cue normal progress through
their developmental cycles.
Moreover, as Thomas (1992) has pointed out, a common plant adaptation to stress is to mimic the state that lack of adaptation would have imposed. Thus, a winter dormant deciduous tree looks like a dead tree.
By analogy, for an organism not to succumb to time-stress (and hence ageing),it has the choice of avoidance, resistance, or exploitation. Time-stress can be avoided by outrunning it: that is, by growing, developing, and differentiating
(avoid growing old by staying young).
It can be resisted, by building-in structural and functional durability and by repairing wear and tear. Or time-stress can be pre-empted, through the adoption of programmed senescence as a developmental and adaptive resource so that ageing and death take place on the organism's own terms.
Accordingly, genes with functions in ageing are of three kinds. Ageing avoidance genes include all the programmes for embryological development, structural and functional specialisation, and maturation.
Ageing resistance genes regulate metabolic homeostasis, balanced turnover, macromolecular repair and maintenance, and resilience towards pathological influences such as diseases or free radicals. Pre-emptive or suicide genes function in the purposeful destructionof cells, tissues, and organs in defiance of entropy (Thomas 1994)."
It seems that the recurring ideas on this thread that Genetic Drift is the only explanation for the possibility of clone degeneration may be erroneous.
The concept of plant aging might lead us down a more fruitful path.
It is true the publication I have cited here does not really come to a clear conclusion of the exact cause or existence of plant aging, it seems clear the question at hand does not have a simple answer, and needs to be explored further.
An interesting idea of Time - Stress
I found this publication @
http://www.springerlink.com/content/7af70m83vd7jrtvg/
You can download the .pdf or view the HTML
Do green plants age, and if so how?
6.5 Genetics and epigenetics of plant ageing
6.5.1 Time and entropy
"In engineering, the term stress describes an environmental factor which, when applied to an object or system, invokes a corresponding strain. Biologists have requisitioned the concept of stress and used it, not always very fastidiously, to describe
the experience of non-optimal environments by living organisms. In a sense, time is a stress, though it differs from all other stresses in that, except at absolute zero, it is always present.
Even when all controllable environmental influences are fixed
or excluded, time accumulates as thermal time. Ageing is the biological response to time-stress. The physiology of individuals and their substructures is envisaged as reacting to non-optimal environments by invoking specific stress genes, stress
160 Howard Thomas proteins, and stress metabolites. By the same token, it could be argued that ageing expresses the activities of time-stress genes and their products (Thomas 1994).
Viable organisms and their components can adopt any of three different strate-gies to deal with environmental stress: avoidance, resistance, or exploitation.Therophytes (Cannabis) (Table 1) are stress-avoiders, whereas phanerophytes survive by resisting stress. All plants exploit stress to some degree or other for example low
seasonal temperature is used for time-measurement by winter dormant structures such as seeds and buds. Indeed, many or even most plants are absolutely dependent on environmental deviations from optimality to cue normal progress through
their developmental cycles.
Moreover, as Thomas (1992) has pointed out, a common plant adaptation to stress is to mimic the state that lack of adaptation would have imposed. Thus, a winter dormant deciduous tree looks like a dead tree.
By analogy, for an organism not to succumb to time-stress (and hence ageing),it has the choice of avoidance, resistance, or exploitation. Time-stress can be avoided by outrunning it: that is, by growing, developing, and differentiating
(avoid growing old by staying young).
It can be resisted, by building-in structural and functional durability and by repairing wear and tear. Or time-stress can be pre-empted, through the adoption of programmed senescence as a developmental and adaptive resource so that ageing and death take place on the organism's own terms.
Accordingly, genes with functions in ageing are of three kinds. Ageing avoidance genes include all the programmes for embryological development, structural and functional specialisation, and maturation.
Ageing resistance genes regulate metabolic homeostasis, balanced turnover, macromolecular repair and maintenance, and resilience towards pathological influences such as diseases or free radicals. Pre-emptive or suicide genes function in the purposeful destructionof cells, tissues, and organs in defiance of entropy (Thomas 1994)."
It seems that the recurring ideas on this thread that Genetic Drift is the only explanation for the possibility of clone degeneration may be erroneous.
The concept of plant aging might lead us down a more fruitful path.
It is true the publication I have cited here does not really come to a clear conclusion of the exact cause or existence of plant aging, it seems clear the question at hand does not have a simple answer, and needs to be explored further.
Word! Over 25 years with the strain that I grow almost exclusively.
No degradation at all.
CC
cultivars in general farming have been vegetatively propagated for centuries.
'Bramleys seedling' - the UK's most popular cooking apple and widespread across the world, was discovered as a tree in 1809.
VG
'Bramleys seedling' - the UK's most popular cooking apple and widespread across the world, was discovered as a tree in 1809.
VG
apples are very interesting. The seeds from a given apple will grow into trees with completely different apples from other trees, different from their siblings and different from their parents... no big deal if you're growing for hard cider, but for eating or cooking, not so good.
This is why most all cooking and eating apples are grown in orchards where seeds from siblings were planted in the orchard grid, and as soon as the root system becomes well established the meristems were all replaced with grafted cuts from a single desirable tree.
yep, seeds can also take many years to bear fruit, so budding/grafting is the standard practice. i love being able to choose the rootstock to fit your desired final size of tree.
Regulator Dave
Member
Thanks for dropping in Clackamas
Did you ever see the original mother from seed that your keeper strain is from? Was it better or the same as the clone?
junior_grower
Active member
It looks like some horrible information on DNA, and how it functions/ goes through replication etc is being tossed around.
I will do a nice write up based around simple terminology over the next few days to week and post it up. It will explain that although DNA under goes mutations daily, the cell is a wonderfully smart bio mechanism that can in fact correct and remove any mutations from DNA ( to the exception of virally inserted DNA).
I will do a nice write up based around simple terminology over the next few days to week and post it up. It will explain that although DNA under goes mutations daily, the cell is a wonderfully smart bio mechanism that can in fact correct and remove any mutations from DNA ( to the exception of virally inserted DNA).
You guys may have seen this on another thread but it proves the point that science is still just theory. ( in this case we just realized we still don't know squat about D.N.A. )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tevWzkVrk2s
I think its safe to say that for what we know about growing cannabis we probably have twice as much still to learn. What I love about the hobby the most is that there is so many different ways to go about it, and no matter what you believe you can still kick ass at it with multiple methods. thread on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tevWzkVrk2s
I think its safe to say that for what we know about growing cannabis we probably have twice as much still to learn. What I love about the hobby the most is that there is so many different ways to go about it, and no matter what you believe you can still kick ass at it with multiple methods. thread on.
Viral DNA also gets edited if discovered but some slips through. This thread is tosh why bother trying to teach genetics to people who dont read. To the OP. A clone is a clone. A clone with a virus is a clone with a virus. A mother and clone are genetically identical. Entire plants can be generated from one cell as every cell has all the genes and the cells are totipotent like stem cells. A clone is a multitude of cells, each with the parents identical DNA. A plantwide mutation would be very unlikely and would have to be via sexual recombination - not cloned. Environmental conditions will alter phenotypic expression not genotype.
Clones are and exact replica of the mother plant. So the strain cant get better or worse. The grower could be relating to revegging and already harvested plant. I have seen strains get much more potent after you reveg and bud again... by the 3rd run we had some STANKY shit... by the 6th she started to degrade and debark..
Been taking the same Ak47 clone and Chemd clone for along time and by no way have they gotten any weaker. Only better cuz ive learned how they grow.
It is strain dependent but it is safe to say that the only way to DEGRADE a strain would be to reveg and bring it back multiple times... but it gets better before it gets worse. Thats what ive learned in my garden...
Been taking the same Ak47 clone and Chemd clone for along time and by no way have they gotten any weaker. Only better cuz ive learned how they grow.
It is strain dependent but it is safe to say that the only way to DEGRADE a strain would be to reveg and bring it back multiple times... but it gets better before it gets worse. Thats what ive learned in my garden...
