Dumb question, if you clone a very stressed plant, does the future clones and clones of clones be effected by the stress of the original mother?
Does it matter?
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I would say that the clone won’t be as strong initially if it comes from a stressed plant, but if given time to recover and get healthy then that should be the end of the story. Subsequent clones should be healthy as long as the generation 2 clone is.
This is only based on intuition so take it with a grain of salt.
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Depends how damaged the DNA was.
I was just hearing that this is called “dudding”, when “genetic drift” occurs… and it can be “cured” by using tissue-culture apparently. The most recent Potcast show. 
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Genetic drift comes from breeding practices , sporting would be the term for a plant that suffers changes due to damaged RNA from tissue culture or cloning. I’ve seen strains kept for over 15yrs in clone form. Its definetly helps if you always try and take healthy cuttings and replace your mom every 6 months to a year max, roots build hormones with age and the plant wants to flower and gets upset we force it not to.
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I think when people talk about genetic drift in clones, they’re really seeing negative impacts of acclimatization. as clones are disseminated from one grow to another, grown in different environments, cloned again, and brought into new environments, the plant is constantly adapting to new environmental conditions, stresses, and growth mediums, causing it to express different epigenetic traits until it no longer resembles the initial cutting.
at least that’s my understanding of it, I think I might have just restated the first sentence of Heritagefarms’ post in layman’s terms.
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If the plant is stressing because of a pheno type that has a sensitivity to low or high PH then yes the clones will always have this problem too. DNA doesn’t change after you clone.
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My experience is that once a plant has reached maturity (say 2-3 months from seed) all clones are the same. If anything some strains actually seem to get better with time, but that could just be from dialing them in.
I definitely think keeping moms relatively fresh is a good idea. I used to do long term bonsai moms and they for sure lost vigour over time.
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I can assure you that a clone from the same mom, will grow different depending on the location and style of growing. Plants react to different environments and this changes its growth and expression of many things. Its called phenotypic plasticity. Also a plants rna can change from cloning due to damage at the cellular level, its not highly likely especially with healthy moms and proper cloning procedures though so most of what people see is differences from different geographic location and or there style if growing. I used to get clones from a guy that would give his strains out as testers to people in a wide range of different locations. He would have them keep track of everything they used and how they grew it and compare the done product at the end. Even when people used the exact same schedule and nutrient schedule ( remedy) the end result was noticeable different. You could tell it was the same herb but you would think it was from seed and showing several different phenos, but was all from the same mom.
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…sort of a side tangent but kinda relevant…
one aspect that we’ve been in the dark on (mostly) is plant virii; it’s come to light apparently that a big clone farm out in Oakland CA(Darkheart) had a persistent hops virus going around. I am virtually certain I got one of those in the silly GDP plant I had last year(my growing isn’t THAAAAT bad 
).
so a virus can be passed w/o visible signs. sometin to tink about
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