In your opinion, which elite cuts will still be around in 20 years?

[Piff Rhys Jones]

healthy mother plants give healthy clones.

even Shanti Baba of MNS, has stated he starts new mother plants each year.
it is not the practice of using a cut of a cut that is the problem but what can happen
to the cutting after being removed from the mother plant.

This guy is speaking sense.

I used to be under the impression that keeping mothers for as long as possible helped reduce genetic drift and would prolong the life of the cut.

Shanti suggested otherwise and put up a pretty good argument in favour of cuttings of cuttings and renewing mothers each year.

Shanti takes all his mothers outside for a few months each year, takes fresh cuttings of each, and these then become the new mothers for the coming year.

He's managed to keep the Haze C male alive for a long long time in this manner.

As far as cuts being around in the next 20 years. I reckon Cheese will be here in the UK for a long long time.

 

[VerdantGreen]

bubba.

one interesting way of preserving mothers i read about was to bury an little of the stem each time you root prune and repot - then over the years the plant renews itself.

in practice i find that i have to start a new one every year or two.

VG

 

[lost in a sea]

ill be smoking bubba/chem/amnesia haze/sd and a fair few others in 2050 if i havent been to a labour camp before then,, but with the way america is going ill be in one before 2020 lol

sometimes i worry does fema have enough coffins,,,

will monsatan and bayer own ganja by then ??

well if they do the rest of the world will be so fucked it will hardly matter,,

 

[Limonene420]

bubba.

one interesting way of preserving mothers i read about was to bury an little of the stem each time you root prune and repot - then over the years the plant renews itself.

in practice i find that i have to start a new one every year or two.

VG

yeah this is also mentioned in the "All About Bonsai Mums" thread. I keep my bonsai moms for about 1-2 years then start new one, and just flower the old moms outside. So I have yet to need to split a plant but very interesting way to keep healthy growth on the plant.

Set the bottom of the rootball on about 3/4 of an inch of compost then pack out the sides and finally cover the top with a 1/4 to 3/8 of an inch. This means the mum is planted round a 1/4 inch deeper every time root pruning is done about 1/2 an inch a year. In a couple of years from now I will cut down vertically and split the plant in two as the side branch will have a root system of its own. Using this method the roots are constantly being replaced and as well the main trunk replaced slowly. This seems to keep the Mums healthy for many years.

 

[RetroGrow]

I think the question is, will WE be around in 2050?

 

[Piff Rhys Jones]

Quoting Shantibaba from April 2009 Weed World article:

However the most essential part of keeping a strain(s) going for many years in great health will be this single feature. Mother and father plants used to clone from and to maintain the genetics from are usually grown under artificial lights. To manage the fitness and health of the strain it is essential to cut a clone from the old mother/fathers, root them and grow them under natural sunlight for a period of about 1-2 months then bring them or a clone of them back inside to take over from the old parents as new mother/father plants. This single aspect of growing the plant outside for part of the year will ensure the new parent plants that the clones come from will be virile and strong, instilling a certain level of fitness in the strain. Repeat this year after year and the strain will out live you! My plant library exists since decades this way and they show no sign of deterioration, nor does a single clone coming from them!

 

[DRorganic]

mr.nice and Shantibaba mango and Neville hazes

 

[Honk3y]

yo thanks for the info Piff, ive always wondered and now you have answered my question. id share this chunk of bubble hash with you if i could.. but instead ill say thanks. greatly appreciated.

 

[ickybuds2012]

as far as i get it , the processes involved with breeding a seedline from a mother plant require the original mother plant alive, so the question is ... how long can you keep a plant a live .. and i really think that depends in the conditions they grow ,, and how much love you give em

as far as elite cuts go ,, they are cuts ,, so ir ends up being the same .. how long can you keep the plant alive ...
..will the clone change over time ?? ,, i have not tested myself , but its common sense it might loose its vigor ..


peace ~

 

[Piff Rhys Jones]

yo thanks for the info Piff, ive always wondered and now you have answered my question. id share this chunk of bubble hash with you if i could.. but instead ill say thanks. greatly appreciated.

No problem bro - I reckon the logic behind it is that we can never truly replicate the sun and nature indoors and so after a while (or years) of keeping a mother under lights she gets sad and loses the will to live.

I reckon we'd be the same if someone locked us inside for the rest of our lives. Vitamin D withdrawal and all that...

 

[Honk3y]

yea that definitely makes sense. besides, even without knowing that info it should be a no brainer to put mother plants outside in the summer time, well if its possible anyways.. the sun is king, plus that way you dont have to use up your bulb life or add to the power bill

 

[motaco]

Hopefully in twenty years things will be more legal than ever before. Even now in Cali the idea of an "elite" cut is dying out. That was something that really existed during the 80s and 90s and happened when growers lived in an elite world of secrecy. They shared cuttings from mother plants during a time when most people were growing what they found out of bag seed. Now there are 3 reality TV shows based around medical marijuana. Its more open than ever before. Dispensaries sell clones for a few dollars a piece. Since people openly grow you can just ask friendly people for cuts or pay a few dollars if they have something you like.

I'm sure in the future there will still be breeders who refuse to share cuts and so forth. But I don't think anything will be famous and be elite. It will be famous or be elite. It will be famous because of how much of it is on the street, and how many people tried it.

There will just be cuts. And lots of people will have different stuff, including some that may be famous but rare, like Cali-O. But I think most of the stuff once deemed "elite" will just disappear into an endless sea of cuts nobody ever heard of before. And will only be "elite" to the people who don't wish to share them for whatever reason.

That idea I think, of an elite. It can only take place in a marketplace saturated by inferior weed. To pot snobs what dispensaries offer may seem like drastically inferior weed, but to the average smoker there is scarcely a difference.

Its not like the days of when true "elites" existed. Like when 90% of the weed you smoked all year was seedy import and then you got a bag of Haze or Alaskan Thunderfuck.

 

[headband 707]

What is the best way to accomplish the maximum life of a cut? Cloning a clone of a clone of a clone..... I understand can result in loss of vigor. So would a better method be revegetating and flowering out or just leaving a mom in veg for years and years, transplanting and trimming the root ball?

So when do you factor in genetic drift from cloning off cloning off clones which is a bad idea imvho
I have heard many grower say sure I have done this for years but much of the bud out there today also sucks.. I know I'm paying for it and smoking it..
Nah I would say most of the bud from yesteryear is gone and new genetics has taken it's place. You can get some of what was. But I can't say I have seen a lot of the old bud around. It's has always been like that great bud always lasts for about 2 to 4 years then moves on. stay safe headband 707

 

[headband 707]

Quoting Shantibaba from April 2009 Weed World article:

You know I'm going to have to say this about what Shantibaba has and what others may have... He has lots of cash and lights more then most ppl so he can do what he wants he also sells his product. I on the other hand just smoke it. I'm always looking for bud to keep me high. I don't give two shits who says what if I can't get high I just can't.. If he doesn't notice a drift in his product and I do then that is just the way it is.. There is nothing I can do about that.. I look for cannabis to keep me high ,,,I obviously smoke a lot of cannabis more then most. I will smoke lbs of a products before I see or evaluate it. By the time that is done I wil know the product. Genetic drifts happen with plants that is the way it is look up bannana . Just because someone say somthing doesn't make it true . If I notice genetic drift and no one else does then great ,,,headband 707

 

[Applesauce]

headband, you're full of shit. Genetic drift that only you notice, right. Okay. Clones of clones will always be viable.

 

[OrganicOzarks]

Mexi Brick Weed

 

[peterpan]

Genetic drift , lol. Peace

 

[chefboy6969]

Genetic drift ,

don't joke it actually exists and when it happens to you. You won't be laughing about it..Try taking cuts from the same mother for years and see what happens

peace
Chefboy

 

[MrSterling]

This topic seems like an exercise in futility and speculation. Weed isn't just like roses or a tree. It's a plant with a limited natural life without artificial lights and we don't have the breeding numbers to keep strains genetically stable. Stop obsessing over strains and names and questions like this become moot.

 

[headband 707]

really applsauce,,,,,,

really applsauce,,,,,,

headband, you're full of shit. Genetic drift that only you notice, right. Okay. Clones of clones will always be viable.

[SIZE=+2]Random Genetic Drift [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Copyright © 1993-1997 by Laurence Moran [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][Last Update: January 22, 1993][/SIZE]

he two most important mechanisms of evolution are natural selection and genetic drift. Most people have a reasonable understanding of natural selection but they don't realize that drift is also important. The anti- evolutionists, in particular, concentrate their attack on natural selection not realizing that there is much more to evolution. Darwin didn't know about genetic drift, this is one of the reasons why modern evolutionary biologists are no longer "Darwinists". (When anti-evolutionists equate evolution with Darwinism you know that they have not done their homework!)
Random genetic drift is a stochastic process (by definition). One aspect of genetic drift is the random nature of transmitting alleles from one generation to the next given that only a fraction of all possible zygotes become mature adults. The easiest case to visualize is the one which involves binomial sampling error. If a pair of diploid sexually reproducing parents (such as humans) have only a small number of offspring then not all of the parent's alleles will be passed on to their progeny due to chance assortment of chromosomes at meiosis. In a large population this will not have much effect in each generation because the random nature of the process will tend to average out. But in a small population the effect could be rapid and significant.
Suzuki et al. explain it as well as anyone I've seen;

"If a population is finite in size (as all populations are) and if a given pair of parents have only a small number of offspring, then even in the absence of all selective forces, the frequency of a gene will not be exactly reproduced in the next generation because of sampling error. If in a population of 1000 individuals the frequency of "a" is 0.5 in one generation, then it may by chance be 0.493 or 0.0505 in the next generation because of the chance production of a few more or less progeny of each genotype. In the second generation, there is another sampling error based on the new gene frequency, so the frequency of "a" may go from 0.0505 to 0.501 or back to 0.498. This process of random fluctuation continues generation after generation, with no force pushing the frequency back to its initial state because the population has no "genetic memory" of its state many generations ago. Each generation is an independent event. The final result of this random change in allele frequency is that the population eventually drifts to p=1 or p=0. After this point, no further change is possible; the population has become homozygous. A different population, isolated from the first, also undergoes this random genetic drift, but it may become homozygous for allele "A", whereas the first population has become homozygous for allele "a". As time goes on, isolated populations diverge from each other, each losing heterozygosity. The variation originally present within populations now appears as variation between populations." (Suzuki, D.T., Griffiths, A.J.F., Miller, J.H. and Lewontin, R.C. in An Introduction to Genetic Analysis 4th ed. W.H. Freeman 1989 p.704)​

Of course random genetic drift is not limited to species that have few offspring, such as humans. In the case of flowering plants, for example, the stochastic element is the probabilty of a given seed falling on fertile ground while in the case of some fish and frogs it is the result of chance events which determine whether a newly hatched individual will survive. Drift is also not confined to diploid genetics; it can explain why we all have mitochondria that are descended from those of a single women who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago.

"This does not mean that there was a single female from whom we are all descended, but rather that out of a population numbering perhaps several thousand, by chance, only one set of mitochondrial genes was passed on. (This finding, perhaps the most surprising to us, is the least disputed by population geneticists and others familiar with genetic drift and other manifestations of the laws of probability.)" (Curtis, H. and Barnes, N.S. in Biology 5th ed. Worth Publishers 1989 p. 1050.)​

But random genetic drift is even more that this. It also refers to accidental random events that influence allele frequency. For example,

"Chance events can cause the frequencies of alleles in a small population to drift randomly from generation to generation. For example, consider what would happen if [a]... wildflower population ... consisted of only 25 plants. Assume that 16 of the plants have the genotype AA for flower color, 8 are Aa, and only 1 is aa. Now imagine that three of the plants are accidently destroyed by a rock slide before they have a chance to reproduce. By chance, all three plants lost from the population could be AA individuals. The event would alter the relative frequency of the two alleles for flower color in subsequent generations. This is a case of microevolution caused by genetic drift... "Disasters such as earthquakes, floods, or fires may reduce the size of a population drastically, killing victims unselectively. The result is that the small surviving population is unlikely to be representative of the original population in its genetic makeup - a situation known as the bottleneck effect.... Genetic drift caused by bottlenecking may have been important in the early evolution of human populations when calamities decimated tribes. The gene pool of each surviving population may have been, just by chance, quite different from that of the larger population that predated the catastrophe." (Campbell, N.A. in Biology 2nd ed. Benjamin/Cummings 1990 p.443)
​

Several examples of bottlenecks have been inferred from genetic data. For example, there is very little genetic variation in the cheetah population. This is consistant with a reduction in the size of the population to only a few individuals - an event that probably occurred several thousand years ago. An observed example is the northern elephant seal which was hunted almost to extinction. By 1890 there were fewer than 20 animals but the population now numbers more than 30,000. As predicted there is very little genetic variation in the elephant seal population and it is likely that the twenty animals that survived the slaughter were more "lucky" than "fit".

Another example of genetic drift is known as the founder effect. In this case a small group breaks off from a larger population and forms a new population. This effect is well known in human populations;

"The founder effect is probably responsible for the virtually complete lact of blood group B in American Indians, whose ancestors arrived in very small numbers across the Bering Strait during the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago. More recent examples are seen in religious isolates like the Dunkers and Old Order Amish of North America. These sects were founded by small numbers of migrants from their much larger congregations in central Europe. They have since remained nearly completely closed to immigration from the surrounding American population. As a result, their blood group gene frequencies are quite different from those in the surrounding populations, both in Europe and in North America. "The process of genetic drift should sound familiar. It is, in fact, another way of looking at the inbreeding effect in small populations ... Whether regarded as inbreeding or as random sampling of genes, the effect is the same. Populations do not exactly reproduce their genetic constitutions; there is a random component of gene-frequency change." (Suzuki et al. op. cit.)
​

There are many well studied examples of the founder effect. All of the cattle on iceland, for example, are descended from a small group that were brought to the island more than one thousand years ago. The genetic make-up of the icelandic cattle is now different from that of their cousins in Norway but the differences agree well with those predicted by genetic drift. Similarly, there are many pacific islands that have been colonized by small numbers of fruit flies (perhaps one female) and the genetics of these populations is consistant with drift models.

Thus, it is wrong to consider natural selection as the ONLY mechanism of evolution and it is also wrong to claim that natural selection is the predominant mechanism. This point is made in many genetics and evolution textbooks, for example;

"In any population, some proportion of loci are fixed at a selectively unfavorable allele because the intensity of selection is insufficient to overcome the random drift to fixation. Very great skepticism should be maintained toward naive theories about evolution that assume that populations always or nearly always reach an optimal constitution under selection. The existence of multiple adaptive peaks and the random fixation of less fit alleles are integral features of the evolutionary process. Natural selection cannot be relied on to produce the best of all possible worlds." (Suzuki, D.T., Griffiths, A.J.F., Miller, J.H. and Lewontin, R.C. in An Introduction to Genetic Analysis 4th ed., W.H. Freeman, New York 1989)​

And:

"One of the most important and controversial issues in population genetics is concerned with the relative importance of genetic drift and natural selection in determining evolutionary change. The key question at stake is whether the immense genetic variety which is observable in populations of all species is inconsequential to survival and reproduction (ie. is neutral), in which case drift will be the main determinant, or whether most gene substitutions do affect fitness, in which case natural selection is the main driving force. The arguments over this issue have been intense during the past half- century and are little nearer resolution though some would say that the drift case has become progressively stronger. Drift by its very nature cannot be positively demonstrated. To do this it would be necessary to show that selection has definitely NOT operated, which is impossible. Much indirect evidence has been obtained, however, which purports to favour the drift position. Firstly, and in many ways most persuasively is the molecular and biochemical evidence..." (Harrison, G.A., Tanner, J.M., Pilbeam, D.R. and Baker, P.T. in Human Biology 3rd ed. Oxford University Press 1988 pp 214-215)​

The book by Harrison et al. is quite interesting because it goes on for several pages discussing the controversy. The authors point out that it is very difficult to find clear evidence of selection in humans (the sickle cell allele is a notable exception). In fact, it is difficult to find good evidence for selection in most organisms - most of the arguments are after the fact (but probably correct)!

The relative importance of drift and selection depends, in part, on estimated population sizes. Drift is much more important in small populations. It is important to remember that most species consist of numerous smaller inbreeding populations called "demes". It is these demes that evolve. Studies of evolution at the molecular level have provided strong support for drift as a major mechanism of evolution. Observed mutations at the level of gene are mostly neutral and not subject to selection. One of the major controversies in evolutionary biology is the neutralist-selectionist debate over the importance of neutral mutations. Since the only way for neutral mutations to become fixed in a population is through genetic drift this controversy is actually over the relative importance of drift and natural selection.