Hey Arnold! A plant that is propagated by serially cloning, will age much much faster at the cellular level than a plant that is held in semi stasis from its puberty age and constantly renewed from old tissue. ie mother plants are a way of holding back aging. Most of the research has in fact been done with elite forestry genetic lines, even their stock clone lines age beyond where cuttings are of commercially viable any longer, the cells having lost vigour and weakened beyond recall.

So at the moment with cannabis, bonsai mothers are the best method I know of, of holding its age back. Once a clone line has aged to a point that it is getting senescent, nothing can rejuvenate it, like all things the ability of cells to replicate is not finite. Plants are different to animal life in that a stem has many incipient dormant buds, these buds meristem is fixed at the age it was formed. So If I have a 5 year old mum and I force a dormant bud in the old bark to develop the shoot produced is 5 years younger age wise at the cell level than the tips would be at the top of the plant. This also holds true to a certain extent with the normal propagation methods used with bonsai mothers. ie the tips are constantly cut back to normal semi dormant nodes, these develop into new shoots that are aged from when they were formed. I hope you can translate this to what happens with cuttings that are produced by the serial method without me having to go into detail.

Some people are very confused about this and think that tissue culture can rejuvenate a clone line. This is not true re the cellular age level of any meristem is the cellular age, it can’t be changed. What tissue culture can do is produce a plant completely free of virus vectors. This make the plants take on a new vigour and life at the full potential for what their base cell age is.

I hope this helps.

I've had the cheese for almost 5 years and if anything the finished product is better than it used to be..
I almost always serial clone ..

The yield isn't great...but then it never was. However the taste and smell just seems to keep improving.


...Of course this may be down to my stunningly impressive growing skills....



.....I suspect not ....


I reckon it's down to using MH bulbs for about 90% of the time .....



Laz

Agree here, a clone is a clone... its genetic make up is the same. It should not be any different no matter how many times it is cloned.

my first grow bible reported the knowledge of up to 22 times without change, a new mother for 22 grows

We are dealing with cuttings, not clones. Clones are grown from a few cell scrapings into a full blown duplicate of the cell donor.

isn't using a cutting just like using a larger cell sample to create a full blown duplicate of the cell donor, therefore a clone?

It's not the same thing dude.

Horticultural

The term clone is used in horticulture to mean all descendants of a single plant, produced by vegetative reproduction or apomixis. Many horticultural plant cultivars are clones, having been derived from a single individual, multiplied by some process other than sexual reproduction. As an example, some European cultivars of grapes represent clones that have been propagated for over two millennia. Other examples are potato and banana. Grafting can be regarded as cloning, since all the shoots and branches coming from the graft are genetically a clone of a single individual, but this particular kind of cloning has not come under ethical scrutiny and is generally treated as an entirely different kind of operation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloning#Horticultural

Plant cutting, also known as striking/cloning, is a technique for vegetatively (asexually) propagating plants in which a piece of the source plant containing at least one stem cell is placed in a suitable medium such as moist soil, potting mix, coir or rock wool. The cutting produces new roots, stems, or both, and thus becomes a new plant independent of the parent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_(plant)

Plant asexual propagation or cloning, is done with cuttings. A living plant branch with a growing tip is cut from a "mother" plant. This cutting is rooted and changes from a branch into a new plant. Actually it's not a new plant but a copy of an old plant.
http://www.clonekit.com/pages/cloning_intro.html

Hey Rev,

I'm not a trained horticulturist or geneticist so do please take my musing with a grain of salt. First off we need to discard terminology that is inaccurate. We are dealing with cuttings, not clones. Clones are grown from a few cell scrapings into a full blown duplicate of the cell donor.

Serial cuttings, cuttings taken from cutting, etc., do degrade over time. I have this from OT1 whom I have every reason to respect when it comes to horticultural matters. And as in your xerox example, it makes sense. Hence it is important to learn how to keep Moms going for a long time. If done right, one can keep a Mom going for many years. I'll be demonstrating a root trimming, transplant in me 2nd diary in the next few days where I will explain some of the principals involved. Trimming the roots periodically is the key to keep a Mom going.

You can also do a search for OT's posts on the subject. OT1 is certainly much more eloquent on the subject than I am.

PS I think OT1 said you could serial cut for about two years before things took a bad turn. Sorry. Too lazy to find the link for you.

ive been doin this with my fav chronic for 4 years now...no probs ere!!!

nice research. However cloning in regards to horticulture is a slang term and essentially not accurate.

clone (n.)
1903, in botany, from Gk. klon "a twig." The verb is first recorded 1959. Extension to genetic duplication of human beings is from 1970.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
--------------------------------------------------------------

clone
noun
1. a person who is almost identical to another [syn: ringer]
2. a group of genetically identical cells or organisms derived from a single cell or individual by some kind of asexual reproduction
3. an unauthorized copy or imitation [syn: knockoff]

verb
1. make multiple identical copies of; "people can clone a sheep nowadays"

WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.

clone (klōn) Pronunciation Key
Noun

1. A cell, group of cells, or organism that is produced asexually from and is genetically identical to a single ancestor. The cells of an individual plant or animal, except for gametes and some cells of the immune system, are clones because they all descend from a single fertilized cell and are genetically identical. A clone may be produced by fission, in the case of single-celled organisms, by budding, as in the hydra, or in the laboratory by putting the nucleus of a diploid cell into an egg that has had its nucleus removed. Some plants can produce clones from horizontal stems, such as runners. Clones of other cells and some plants and animals can also be produced in a laboratory. See also therapeutic cloning.
2. A copy of a sequence of DNA, as from a gene, that is produced by genetic engineering. The clone is then transplanted into the nucleus of a cell from which genetic material has been removed.


Verb

1. To produce or grow a cell, group of cells, or organism from a single original cell.
2. To make identical copies of a DNA sequence. See more at genetic engineering.


The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

clone (n.)
1. A cell, group of cells, or organism that is descended from and genetically identical to a single common ancestor, such as a bacterial colony whose members arose from a single original cell.
2. An organism descended asexually from a single ancestor, such as a plant produced by layering or a polyp produced by budding.
3. A DNA sequence, such as a gene, that is transferred from one organism to another and replicated by genetic engineering techniques.
4. One that copies or closely resembles another, as in appearance or function: "filled with business-school clones in gray and blue suits" (Michael M. Thomas).

v. cloned, clon·ing, clones

v. tr.

1. To make multiple identical copies of (a DNA sequence).
2. To create or propagate (an organism) from a clone cell: clone a sheep.
3. To reproduce or propagate asexually: clone a plant variety.
4. To produce a copy of; imitate closely: "The look has been cloned into cliché" (Cathleen McGuigan).

v. intr.
To grow as a clone.

[Greek klōn, twig.]
clon'al (klō'nəl) adj., clon'al·ly adv., clon'er n.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

clone (n.)
[b]1903, in botany, from Gk. klon "a twig."
1959. The verb is first recorded
1970 Extension to genetic duplication of human beings is from

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
Cite This Source

Etymology

The term clone is derived from κλών, the Greek word for "twig, branch", referring to the process whereby a new plant can be created from a twig.

In horticulture, the spelling clon was used until the twentieth century; the final e came into use to indicate the vowel is a "long o" instead of a "short o"[citation needed]. Since the term entered the popular lexicon in a more general context, the spelling clone has been used exclusively.[/b]

Done what? Serial cuttings or keeping a Mom for over 4 years and taking cuttings from her?

Does serial mean taking cuttings from grown up cuttings ?

for you to be right Randal, u would need to be saying that the dna changes when you take a cutting, every source I look at says that cuttings = cloning, including the dictionary definitions which state propagation through cuttings is cloning can you provide links to info that's shows that propagation through cuttings is only slang and not cloning

Do meristem cells and DNA define 100% what plant is? or is it possible that due to the nature of forming callus, each cutting with develop defences?

The way I see it, there is a difference between "clone" and "cutting", only a clone from A single cell will produce truly identical plants. so there is merit to the OT and Randalizer argument. (unfortunately )

Based on the obtained data for enzyme activity levels and isozyme banding patterns, it is concluded that there is a variation in activity levels between the mother tree and the tissue culture clones, as well as among different tissue culture clones. There is no definite relationship between variations in activity levels recorded here and flavonoid profiles of the same clone. It is worth to mention that all clones showed variations in flavonoid profiles showed variations in isozyme banding patterns, with some exceptions. For instance, the flavonoid profile of the clone no. 2 differed from that of the mother tree (Table 1), the same clone had different EST and GOT pattern (Fig. 2). Different authors have reported variations in enzyme activity levels and isozyme banding patterns in tissue culture- derived date palm somaclones (Saker et al., 2000; Baaziz et al., 1994) and in different tissue culture-derived plants (Torres and Al- Jibouri, 1989). These variations were explained on the basis that a possible genetic modification may have occurred during callus proliferation stage. Since izozymes are gene products, such variations may be responsible for triggering of specific genes to produce additional isomers or repressing specific genes, which may result in fewer numbers of isomers. In general falvonoid profiles and isozyme banding patterns data may be used as an early test to screen tissue culture-derived date palm clones for genetic stability.

These variations were explained on the basis that a possible genetic modification may have occurred during callus proliferation stage.

dunno why they are speculating on the reason for the variations, when a simple dna test would prove the theory either way:

dna from a cutting of the mother plant

compared with

dna from a cutting of a cutting from the mother plant,

sigh

I warned you guys that I wasn't a geneticist or a horticulturist.

Coat please!

Read through the link mate, it is not speculation thumbsup.gif .

"...a possible genetic modification may have occurred, during callus proliferation stage. "

".....These variations were explained on the basis that genetic modification occurs during the callus proliferation stage."

I was always taught that a cutting is different from a clone because, a clone is an exact replica of the parent donor in looks and genetic make up, where as a cutting has the same genetic make up as the parent donor, but does not grow on to be an exact replica of the parent donor visually, therefore it is not a clone.

The reason a cutting doesn't develop in the exact same manner and end up looking like it's parent is due to the environment. It's nearly impossible to replicate the exact same environment that's parent grew up in. Given that a cutting has the exact same genetic makeup to it's parent it is a clone of that plant.

if its not speculation why do they use the words: possible, may



the grammar is speculative, if they were scientifically sure they would say something like:


can you post any links to info that explicitly says that cuttings are not dna clones of the parent/mother


go back and read the thread, just because it doesn't look the same doesn't mean its not a clone, identical human twins have as many physical differences as they do similarities even though they have identical DNA and are basically clones, in other words its not really possible to create 2 perfect copies of the same organism through cloning, as felix says the environments will be different, and where you have identical dna reacting to different environments then the physical appearances will be different even though they have identical DNA(clones)

so should i put the original plant back into veg??