Decrease of yield of a once reliable genetics

[Jhhnn]

Well in case of the fruit trees its a bit different. They were designed by the nature to exist many years or decades. A hemp- plant or tomato or cocumber were designrd by the nature to exist one season and not a few years.

Hydrodreams

Not that I'm any sort of biologist, but I think you address the heart of the matter.

Longevity can be considered to be a separate & identifiable genetic trait. Among humans, some family lineages have it, and some don't. That's likely true for all living things. With fruit trees, for example, what we see in clone propagated varieties is the result of a selection process that's occurred for many, many years, with lines lacking longevity falling to the wayside.

With cannabis, lines that have longevity genetics will endure better via clone propagation than those lacking. Only time will reveal which are which. Obviously, outcrossing lines having longevity will increase the chances of longevity among the descendants who may become clone only varieties themselves.

If we think about it much at all, there are few places in the world where longevity is a survival factor for wild cannabis, and it's only become a survival factor for cultivated cannabis in the last 40 years or so. It's still a non-sequiter for the vast majority of world-wide cultivated cannabis, which is still grown by traditional seed propagation.

Perhaps the most significant development wrt clone longevity is the discovery that Zamal, a variety from La Reunion island, possesses longevity genes and grows for many years in its natural environment. Capturing those qualities in domesticated strains holds the promise of very long-lived clone strains, and also the promise of continuous or repeated light cycle induced harvests from established plants.

The "falling down" of clone only lineages can't really be attributed to environmental issues, given that those vary wildly yet the whole line will fall down at about the same time... the mothers & the clones together. It doesn't matter if it's the original mother or a tenth generation of cutting.

 

[pip313]

Its not that true your making it sound like from taking cuttings over thousands of years is killing the banana when in fact environment / hurricanes/ storms and most importantly panama disease is whats killing the banana NOT mono cropping the banana its new diseases that plants can;t combat
But like some posts mentioned on top taking a healthy cutting rather then a weak will establish good and healthy clones when you take a a clone from a sick or diseased plant your cutting is sick and diseased period .....
Only way i can actually see some kind of Gentic drift or DNA damage is from excessive UV lighting like many now are thinking they will produce more resin with UV additives
thank god for our atmosphere to block most of it or we would be all genetically drifting rather fast

what happened to the gros micheal banana ??? which was actually better then cavendish it was wiped out by disease and that is what might be happening with the cavendish as well
I think for some growing same strain for years an years its not the plant ... Its your body gets used to the stone no different then having a headache before all i needed was 1 tylenal and it was gone now i need 2 - 3 to get rid of it our bodies get used to it

The gros michael banana is still avaliable just no longer the main commercial variety.

My former caregiver experienced drift his mothers and his partners lost smell at the same time. Nycd went from one gram in a house stinking all 3 floors to a oz making the jar smell like hay. 2 houses with 2 mothers and he couldnt get smell back. I dropped him because of that and some other things.

He claimed he never changed nute programs or anything and I belive him dna is the only thing that can totally take away smell.

 

[purple_man]

to be honest, the only thing i could think of is, that the telomers lenth n functionality of said motherplant, gets reduced to a certain shortness, where certain translation n transcription processes throughout the whole plant and it's offsprings can't operate at the usual frequency -> loss of vigour, and other "anomalities" compared to the same plant couple of years ago... it's a just a hypothesis, ....

blessss