Cloning question.

[BigJohnny]

Does it make a difference in terms of quality etc etc if I take clones and grow them out, before going into flower take more clones and grow them out, take clones and so on as opposed to having a dedicated mother plant?

[me n me girls]

It will be ok to do that, some strains start to get weaker after a time but its what I do most of the time.

[Vicfirth12]

This is what i do. I take them just before the orginal clone goes into flower. All I would say doing it this way is that mske sure your new cuts are rooted before flowering the orginal clone :-)

[Owderb]

This may help

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.

Owd

[Guest hello]

could you explain this bit pleeeeaaassee ?! - right over my head it went

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

[Guest erbsta]

so, a semi dormant node in a motherplant is a node (the bit at the base of a leaf where new shoots come from) that is well below the growing tip of a branch. Once the branch has been topped it will promote growth from these dormant nodes. These nodes will be much younger in age than other healthy but older branches and tips on the mum.

Giving a mum a harsh cut back now and then will promote new growth and the new growth can be classed as 0 days old. A clone from a clone from a clone will in that case age quickly.

[budderz]

so to bonsai a mother plant is the best way to prevent ageing hence the strain/plant will live longer

good to know

[gb1]

A lesson we would have all liked to have had, first off eh!

[BigJohnny]

Thanks for your replies chaps, some good info.

[Chester Copperpot]

Just try to keep the same light cycle for the clones. No good taking it from the mother that's say on 18/6 and sticking it under 24/0. Messing with it's light cycle, hermies etc. In my opinion.