can you clone seedlings?

[on-tropo new]

I was wandering if cloning a seedling was a good way of improving a seedling's longevity. My house mate believes it will increase the seedlings life, but he believes cloning may damage the DNA, and result in ending up with a plant of lower quality. My understanding is that cloning replicates the genotype thus making identical chromosomes, and if any of those chromosomes were damaged it would be due to cell mutation from an external environmental factor, which of course would influence the phenotype which is never garanteed to be identical because cloning only replicates genetic characteristics not physical.

 

Can cloning damage the genetics of a plant without any environmental influence what-so ever?

 

If so how many times do you think you could clone a plant before it has any noticeable change?

 

Is a seedling to young to clone?

 

 

You're knowledge on this is much appreciated

[loylty gets u nothing]

i like to wait 6 weeks prior to cloning minimum

i like to wait till the plant is on alternating nodes

cloning will give u the exact replica of the donor plant

its only threw yrs of cloning that some genetics loose out on quality

imho u are best off keeping a mum to take the clones off

every 7 or so months i replace with another clone

just some suggestions

all the best

bil

[SukonmiSkunk]

cloning a plant wont diminish any of the genetic qualities at all.. each clone will be exactly the same as the plant it came from..

 

how ever what ive noticed from cloning a clone and so on... serial cloning... the strain .. or more to the point the plant.. weakens .. thats to say.. the buds tend to lose solidness... and yield will diminish slightly with each grow... also a lot of skunk strains will start to throw the ODD male flower.. these flowers arent exactly male.. like a ball sack you would find on a male or true hermie... but they look like a tiny banana... yellow leaf.. we call these "bananas".. these will usually show up if the environment isnt right some where.. increased humidity.. low air flow... and sometimes if youve got a timer fucking up and not turning itself off... these arent too much of a worry.. a few bananas wont ruin the crop... how ever if you were to keep "serial cloning" providing the environment is fine.. you will notice more and more of these bananas appearing... resulting in a few seeds usually around where the bananas were... eventually you will have a crop of seeds...

 

however... this is not exactly a total loss as the seeds that result will be mostly female.. and an exact replica of the clone they came from.. all the qualities of that strain will still be intact... the strain itself doesnt actually weaken... so really all youll need to do .. is once youve noticed a few seeds in a crop.. let them ripen... until theyre just about falling out of the seed bract and grow them out.. then start your cloning all over again...

 

this is what i do.. and for me its far easier to do it this way than to keep an extra room for a mother...

 

when keeping a mother.. the clones from that will be exactly the same regardless of how old the plant is... and replacing that mother every so often with a fresh clone will lengthen the time you can keep cloning from it.. of course eventually youll have to get that back to seed as well... just takes a little longer for the bananas to start to appear... so.. where as serial cloning will get through for about a year... or around 6-10 grows before you get it back to seed.. you could keep a mother plant for around 4-5 years.. sometimes even longer...

 

for a hobbie grower.. as most of us are.. i think the serial cloning method is the better way to go... but if you were cloning for a whole bunch of people.. taking cuts every few weeks. then a mother plant is definately the way to go..

if youre just cloning for yourself.. i think letting a mother plant go for around 8 weeks until you need more clones is a little too long.. i think from a mother plant you really need to be cloning it every 4 weeks at least.. other wise the growth would be way out of control.. and youll find your self pruning it to keep it in check anyway...

 

[Pam]

Most obvious to me is why would you clone a seedling when you're not sure of the sex in young plants?

At least wait until it shows sex to be sure you're making copies of a female.

I'm guessing that you want to do this in order to have 2 or more identical mothers. That's fine as long as you don't unwittingly wind up with 2 fathers instead.

[DrDee]

Granny,

I agree, there's no real good reason to clone seedlings. Having said that, using tissue culture techniques, you can clone any plant with only a tiny piece of leaf or cellular material. Only read about it so far but I'm thinking of trying it. I have all the equipment i need (from shroom growing). Let the little guys grow.

Peace,

Dee (aka Yoda)

[DrDee]

oops, Granny didn't start this, on-tropo did, Didn't mean to slur your name...either of you! <grin>

On-tropo, bilo and suko gave you great advice. One interesting thing about cloning is that it even produces a clone with an identical age of the parent, which makes it so useful to us growers. Clone a seedling and you will get a totally immature clone. AND you'll probably kill the seedling too.

Dee

[G_M]

Why does it kill the seedling?

[nouseforaname]

hey,

bit trashed so deal with the ramblings.. but from my encounters plants in seed form have their genetic make up and their environmental traits.. Now where the seeds were bred is "their" environment.. (genetics /environment).

If these seeds are grown in like conditions they usually take off quicker.. In some instances seeds or clones grown outside their standard conditions over a period of time will show different traits or growth structures.. These same plants grown under different conditions adapt differently and if extensive testing and taggin takes place it is possible to find those gems that are usually lost.. When a seedling or clone is grown under constant conditions it will show its true traits for those conditions.. Only then will each paired clone of the plant perform the same... Then it depends on how well you know the traits(look and growth) to which clone or mum you keep for further use... Alot of growers dont spend the time and effort to find the mums for further generations...

 

 

Clone a seedling and you will get a totally immature clone. AND you'll probably kill the seedling too.

 

Im not sure if anyone still has the old hans video of "sea of green" but he showed a large shed factory from nothing to 200 clones each two weeks.. Im pretty sure the seedlings were only 2-3 weeks old and at 3-4 nodes when he apical cloned (top shoot) then rooted and took 4 more from the regrowth shoots two weeks later before flowering.. the left over stubby shrubs to test for potency and yield then work from there... Once he was tested he had 1 mum clone and 2 paired sets of clones of each mum... when they grew out he had 1 mum 4 top clones and 8 paired sets of clones all from a immature seed