No doubt that is cheap for seeds but for a commercial operation I don't see autos ever making sense. At the risk of being perceived as combative I will share my perspective from a commercial operation with the goal of sharing an angle it would be difficult to see from a non-commercial point of view. I am certainly not shooting down yours or anyone ideas or methods. If anyone uses autos to grow indoors commercially I would love to hear their perspective. I've never tried it so I could be wrong.
There is a a guy on Strainly who is listed under "Mark"
(link to Mark). He sells seeds he produces for $1 and sends them to you before you pay...great dude. We discussed running seed runs but saw more challenges than benefits.
Scale...
Every 2 weeks....
We produce 1300 clones to place 1200 of those clones into veg.
800 of those go into flower... 400 discarded
Repeat
I bet I could get autos for $1 bulk. Clones cost us about 12 cents to produce so there would have to be some serious benefits on the back end.
We are commercial with branding concerns. If our product fluctuates in quality, effect, look, etc we lose business. Multiple/inconsistent phenos would not meet the markets expectations.
Not being able to preserve a killer pheno would be a perceived loss.
Clones cost about 12 cents each vs $1.12 if seeds are a dollar. We do have a cost to keep moms but we have not broken that out but I am sure it isn't near $1 per clone.
We don't have issues with light leaks and we grow in rockwool and soil is a huge draw back in cost and labor. Also dealing with all that dirt. Lots of people do it but for us we like the efficiency of rockwool. 5 people can cut down & hang an 800 plant room and get it cleaned and prepped for loading the next day. If we ran with dirt that would be impossible and require processing square footage for all those pots. We just fill a dumpster and it's over.
So, I see the benefits for smaller growers, especially new ones, having a set-it-and-forget it auto flower. Again, if a commercial grower has found a way to use autos effectively I'd be interested in your input.
Cheers,
Quindarious