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Ne Obliviscaris
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If it vigor doesn't decline, or declines at a very slow rate, what's the use of keeping mothers, instead of just taking clones from your plants before you flip them? This would save me a lot of space as my mother is taking up a chunk of my (very small) veg room.
The science behind the loss of vigor over time has to do with mutations accruing without a chance for them to be selected out (this is not coming from my knowledge of cannabis specificaly, but rather my knowledge of genetics and evolution). All DNA aquires mutations over time, due to various environmental factors,free radicals, toxins etc. When reproduction is asexual ie. cloning, these mutations get automatically passed down across the generations. When you have sexual reproduction then the mutation only has a 50% chance of being passed down, and then isnt necesarily expressed if its recessive, etc. (incidently, this is one of the primary explanations given for the evolution of sexual reproduction in general). So, all clone lines should deteriorate over time, as the various mutations occur. Just to be clear, the vast majority of these mutations wont have any effect on phenotype, and a very, very tiny minority might be beneficial (the rouges and sporting Jsan is referring to), but on average you are going to start introducing negative traits over time. This is simply the nature of asexual reproduction, and most *naturally* asexually reproducing organisms have developed strategies to deal with the issue. So I think its basically irrefutable that, given enough time, your clone lines will deteriorate, the question is the timing.
It makes a lot of sense to me that this would depend a lot upon the strain, different genotypes might be differentially sensitive to environmental stress and so have different base rates of mutation.
Having said that, I have zero intuition about what a raealistic rate is, a couple generations, 10, 100? As several people have pointed out there are strains that have only existed as cuts for many years, so, at least some must do pretty well over years/decades.
Thanks for everyones input, theres a lot of knowledge on this site.
so if this is the case then keeping moms for about a year would drastically cut down on the "generations" (as opposed to cloning your clones) and extend the amount of time you keep your vigor
Clones don't lose vigor, Growers do...
Really folks, 99% of the growers on these forums don't have any growing skills whatsoever - stop blaming genetics, bugs, virus's, whatever - it's Grower Error.
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