Mother Plants grow old.

[skunkVA]

This picture was taken last week. It's from a cut that is essentially 23 years old. I've had her since 1995.
Things have happened over that span but she's still doing good.

 

[Mogrow]

This picture was taken last week. It's from a cut that is essentially 23 years old. I've had her since 1995.
Things have happened over that span but she's still doing good.

hey skunk, how often do you replace the original with a clone?

 

[skunkVA]

About every 6 months. But I've waited longer. She has cycles. She comes above every so often and rock her our while she's on an upswing. She's always been like that. If I take cuts and she throws roots down in 12 days...time to work her..

 

[iCultivate]

From what I've read plants are biologically immortal and don't operate the same way animals do. So I think the loss of vigor over time is caused by something other than them getting old...

But maybe the immortal thing refers only to perennial plants. Seeing as cannabis is an annual and has evolved to live and die in a single season, perhaps the loss of vigor is due to this fact? Making a plant that should be dead within a year kick around for 20 years isn't what you could consider natural.

-- iCultivate --

 

[skunkVA]

growing plants in coco pith under man-made lights isnt what I would call natural either... but it's working...

 

[monkeymun]

I just read this posted by Steep hill labs..not sure where they got it

It's an old story... the Grower can't understand why the last three batches of clones from his mother plant 'Old Reliable' keep getting lower and lower potency values "....no matter how I change up the lighting, micro-nutrients, etc... originally my plants tested 15% CBDA & 6% THCA, now they down to 9% CBDA & 4% THCA."

Then I ask "And the plants themselves, how do they appear compared to earlier clones off the same mother plant?" The answer "Not as robust as they used to be, and more mildew problems."

Like I said, it's an old story, and it's all about old proteins and old DNA. All living organisms have a built-in clock, their 'Circadian Clock', which pretty much starts at Zero the day they/it are born/hatch/sprout. As you grow older, so do the proteins and DNA in your body, and as they get older, they breakdown, first slowly, yet over time the cumulation of damage starts to have appreciable effect on the organisms survivability.

The older a organism is when you clone from it, the more damage that is transferred into the new clones, therefore clones from the mother plants first year contain many less damaged proteins than clones taken during the mothers 3rd year. Bottom line: the longer you keep a mother plant, the poorer quality the clones will statistically be, and there is no way around it if you keep using the same mother plant.

This is why it is wise to seed out a small portion of one of your early clones, then safely store those seeds for long term storage, so you have a ready supply of new mother plants. Of course, bio-diversity being what it is, different seeds will have sprout to form different phenotypes, so you will need plenty of seed to get the new phenotypical mother you are interested in. IF the phenotype just happens to be the common phenotype, then this is easy since 50% of the seeds will be that common phenotype. If on the other hand, what you want is a rare phenotype, then your probability of getting what you want is much less (1/4, 1/8, 1/16/1/32, etc), so you will need a larger quantity of seed to find your desired plant.

What you're describing is known as senescence, the programmed aging of cells over time. It is essentially a measure of cell replications, with each replication leading to the eventual slowly and death of the organism. However, it is important to note that most plant cells are what is referred to as totipotent, meaning they are able to differeniate into any type of cell type that the organism produces and have unlimited replications, akin to stem cells in animals.

http://plantsinaction.science.uq.edu.au/edition1/?q=content/10-2-1-concept-totipotency

This means that under optimal conditions, plant could theoretically live forever. It is said that the only reason the sequoias (Californian redwoods) ever die is due to disease and other external factors, rather than old age. By cloning a plant, you are reproducing it asexually, a mode of reproduction that many organisms exploit, including plants, some of the exclusively. If assexual reproduction per se led to senescence over time, then it follows it would not actually exist, as it would be selected against. But it has been noted by horticulturalists for many year that there can be a loss of vigor from multiple generations of clones (and not just in the cannabis growing world), so there must be something to it. What that could be I'm not sure. Plants are complex and it probably isn't any single factor at play. This is for sure an fascinating topic.

 

[Mogrow]

About every 6 months. But I've waited longer. She has cycles. She comes above every so often and rock her our while she's on an upswing. She's always been like that. If I take cuts and she throws roots down in 12 days...time to work her..

thanks va

 

[Pepe]

Maybe litlle offtopic, but i cand find any information about thc content in motherplants. So my question is, do have motherplants, or even any plant in growth phase (18hrs light) some thc content?

 

[askbill]

This picture was taken last week. It's from a cut that is essentially 23 years old. I've had her since 1995.
Things have happened over that span but she's still doing good.

How often do you regrow it from a cutting taken from her?

 

[UKcannasseur]

I do not believe this at all, and this is why. Do you like OG kush? SFV, Tahoe, or Larry? How about Sour Diesel? Blue Dream? Afgoo? GDP? All of these are extremely old strains yet they are identical in every way shape and fashion since I started growing them years ago. The flavor, look, yield, and high are all equal. IF there is a drift, or a genetic mutation due to age, then I would say that it is very weak at best because of the lack of noticeable difference from when I first grew them until now.

I have seen old strains such as U.k. cheese do much better outside than inside, but I have no past with the cheese as it is from the U.k. and has only been here since 06 so it may never have grown inside that well. I will take unhealthy plants outside in order to get them back to healthy again if necessary.....not sure if this affects the genetics though.

Im currently growing the original uk cheese cut and have been for the past 5 years, i have kept mothers and cloned from a clone of this strain and see no drift whatsoever. But on the other hand i cloned from a clone with a stardog cut and saw a loss in speed of growth/vigor, so my veiw is like with most things its all strain dependant and you cant use one rule of thumb for all strains.