Genetic drift into BAP

Hootigh

Well-known member
Yesterday evening i was reading through the forums and i had seen grover sativas black widow thread. It was hilarious and got me to thinking about how his reaction was the same id had with AK47

AK had been a very special plant that was plant of the year and had thc% regularly around 25+ and not even a decade later serious is amped over a third place win where AK tested less than 20 in spain.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=234479

Sad part was during their celebration they had announced they were going to kill off biddys sister (bud in pic i had tested) due to lack of potency. All the while saying damn near 20 still 1 hit wonder. Biddys sister tested at 19%THC. I lost a hero that day. (Biddys sister was a freebie i got with motivation 23.9% and picked too early)

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=232939&page=16

In that post they have the original parents but say maybe genetic drift. Can it be that rapid to change a plant so dramatically over a short period of time? How often do breeders check established lines of theirs? What are the usual things you'd see in a line going bad? Any success stories about pulling one back to stabilize and find something better or losing the most promising plant you've seen in some time?

Also does anyone have any dosage advice or experience with 6-benzylaminopurine and cannabis? Seems like with the right dosage topping or flowering early for height restrictions would be a thing of the past. I run 200ppm in my feed and plants seem to dig it and branch well. Then again i scrog everything.

Sorry for all the questions i find breeding interesting. Just to clarify im not bashing serious or anyone ( their kali mist sounds great ) the new AK just isnt for me.

On the other hand if anyone at the MNS crew wants me to make sure that any of neville's haze, neville's haze mango, angels breath, or the doors hasnt hit a genetic drift turning into lowryder cannatonic, i will take one for the team:D
 

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Genetic drift seems to be one of those key terms that get thrown around to explain away all kinds of stuff...

The AK47 is one of my favorite stories that I like to re-tell as much as possible because I was around and into growing back when it was at its heighday and was very in love with the strain and when I got back into growing almost 20 years later, I did extensive research into it because I wanted it and was severely disappointed with what I found out.

Basically, genetic drift means (anyone chime in and correct me where I am off base) that a mom was not "renewed" enough and just kept as is for too long. With renewed in that sense I mean that a new clone was cut from the original mum and turned into a new mom as opposed to just continuously cut new clones from the same mum over decades.

From what my research tells me, if you "renew" a mum this way regularly (every couple of years I believe is enough), the "genetic drift" aspect takes a loooooong time to take hold. From what I gather you can keep and "renew" mums this way for decades without genetic drift occuring or being a factor.

To combat genetic drift even further, I believe the mums should also be "redone" once in a while. I believe this is how Shanti handles his mums.
Basically once in a while (maybe every 10 or 20 years?) one should probably go through the trouble of crossing the original mum with a suitable male from its offspring, then grow out the progeny and select a new mother from the sample, hoping/working towards it being as close of a representation of the original mum as possible. Maybe one would need to cross and grow out the progeny for a few generations even, I do not know.

Anyway, this, I believe, is why you get comments/feedback of MNS from early 2000s not being the same as now. Because the mums had to be "redone" once in a while. As long as the mums just get "renewed" (cloned), you have these ~10 year windows where everything is the same. When they get "redone" you have a slight change up from the last 10 years but at its core, the strain remains the same (as long as the breeder knows what he/she is doing, like Shanti does, and doesn't cut corners).

So this is how I understand "genetic drift". But going by definition, I believe it is just the change of the genetic makeup within a mum over time if you just keep the exact same mum alive for long periods (10, 20 years etc).


Anyway, now let's get to the AK47, my favorite thing to rant about :D

So in the late 90s/early 2000s, Serious Seeds was big in business with their AK47, it was winning ALL the cups and it was an EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT strain.
I just started growing as a teen back then with a friend and we didn't have much in terms of funds. Were barely able to afford a basic 400W HPS setup and room with basic atami nutes and promix and all.
So there wasn't much money left for genetics.

I really wanted to get Serious' AK47 but my friend wasn't willing to spend 80+ bucks on seeds so I looked into Nirvana F2s at 15 bucks a pack.

Here comes the first funny anecdote:
Back then, every online community I visited, was bashing Nirvana left and right. They were regarded as thieves and copycats, just capitalizing on other people's work. And basically everyone was saying "go with Nirvana, they are fine but be aware that you are supporting the wrong people and you shouldn't because they just rip off serious seeds and others blablabla".

And it was true, back then, Nirvana was just buying Sensi Jack Herrer or Serious Seeds AK47, grew them out, F2ed them and then started selling those seeds at a fraction of the original's price.
And you had great genetics in the Nirvana packs, they were just a little less bottlenecked/streamlined but were heralding from the same genetic pool as the originals, only 1 generation removed.
Results were had for everyone, including me.

The Nirvana AK47 was great.

Around the time when I was done growing back then and interest faded, I remember during my last visits of online communities, Serious Seeds was advertising their new strain "The Chronic", heavily.
They were saying that it is basically the AK47 cranked up to 11 with better yields and otherwise all the good stuff.
The Chronic sold quite poorly after an initial hype and reviews were rather bad all around.

Then, just when I was "quitting the scene", reports began to surface that Serious Seeds got raided and had lost some of their parent stock during the raids.

Including the AK47 parent stock...

It was later communicated that the AK47 stock was replaced by a parent from The Chronic line. This was communicated by Serious Seeds themselves, I remember reading that in forums and on their own website.
The Chronic had not yet earned a bad reputation and disappointed its buyers yet.
And Serious Seeds was still in full hype mode for The Chronic.

So they figured "what better strain to replace an AK47 parent than what we are basically marketing as an improved AK47?".

And so they did it and they ruined it.

Second funny anecdote:
While all this went down, there was actually a point in time (few years maybe, around 2005, early 2000s for sure), where all the people in the online communities were basically suggesting the Nirvana AK47 over the Serious Seeds original.
By all accounts, the Nirvana version was "better" and "truer" to the original than the "original version from Serious Seeds" itself... Because Serious had already ruined the original AK47 by taking The Chronic to it.

Either way, Serious Seeds heavily leaned on Nirvana during that time and I don't know how they did it because back then many breeders were leaning on Nirvana and noone (I believe) succeeded in what Serious achieved with Nirvana: They actually made them pull their Nirvana AK47...
Since it was selling so great, Nirvana replaced it with a new strain called AK48 but it was completely different from the AK47 and unrelated. Just the name for marketing reasons...


Anyway, long story short:
After these moves by Serious Seeds, somewhere in 2008 or so, the AK47 from Nirvana was gone and replaced by something unrelated and the Serious Seeds AK47 was ruined my crossing The Chronic to it. So AK47 was extinct, basically.


Here comes the kicker:
Because of the disinformation and miscommunication that is going on to this day (a year or so I confronted people from Serious Seeds on another board about this, that they keep insisting AK47 was same as it ever was, perfectly preserved blabla, while I clearly remember how it went down and that they replaced a parent with The Chronic in early 2000s and that grower reports from that point forwards support what I remember, they just kept insisting that I remember it wrong and Chronic was never crossed to AK47 etc. etc. ...), basically AK47 was lost.

If Serious had just been upfront about the AK47 parents being lost in the raid etc. the community as a whole could have collaborated with Serious Seeds and revived the strain forever. But instead they chose to insist that it all is as it ever was and keep selling seeds and people grew it out and nobody preserved their original AK47s and now its gone ...

You hear people here and there claiming they still got an original AK47 clone going since the 90s or something, you hear about the Cherry AK47 pheno etc. etc.

But as it stands, there is no reliable source for AK47 and nobody has been able to recreate the strain/plants from the 90s that earned so much hype and success.

They killed it out of greed...
 
Thanks for the response and information Broseidon. I do remember serious saying they had used chronic to cross to it before as well then seen that post of saying all original parents were still alive and well. That made me do a double take. I wonder how it would've worked out if they used Russian instead.

I grew AK47 myself early 2000's just before it won strain of the year. First plant i ever grew actually ( Talk about a helluva start ) . I definitely agree that she was something special. Oh how i loved watching rookies fall and the fruity taste was excellent. I just wish serious would've been upfront and pulled it from their strains. You just dont let a legend past its prime die on its feet. If they would've done that and released any brand new strain i would've been first in line for a pack. I see they're reworking bubblegum due to genetic drift they didnt notice. When your mantra is less is more because we focus on our strains, statements such as this just make them seem incompetent.

Great info on genetic drift. I appreciate it very much and completely agree that a great breeder refreshing a line isn't a worry. I do wonder how exactly shanti does it though. I had kind of figured that 99% of "breeders" & pollen chuckers in the game wouldn't have had this issue as they havent been around long enough.

On a side note i think if this is the way breeders do it they should let the growers know when they've reworked / refreshed a line. With a breeder as established as shanti I'd be willing to try strains i didnt even care for before if he said it was a retake he found nice.
 
With clones there is not likely going to be any genetic drift for decades, if not centuries. Rose and orchid growers have been growing the same clones for over 100 years with no variation in genetics or phenotype/blooms. Over several centuries with clones you will get some genetic drift though. That can be seen in garlic, which has been propagated by cloves/clones for millennia, and has resulted in a variety of cultivars grown today as heirlooms. I have grown over 100 types of garlic myself. IMO humans have been growing garlic longer than Cannabis as a crop. Legend is that when the devil walked the earth, from his right footprint grew onions, and from the left garlic. Garlics are old plants and ancient seasoning as well as medicine... really old. As old as agriculture, and even older when it was first collected in the wild in Asia. Quite like Cannabis was.

Now the exception to genetic stability in clones is if the plant throws what is called a sport. A sport is an asexual genetic variant of the parent plant. Several rose cultivars are sports of original strains. An example is the Chicago Peace rose which is a sport of an heirloom rose called Peace. They are rare events though. Some plants like bamboos will throw chimeras, which have different phenotypes and genotypes than the parent. But the chimeras have one of a set of phenotypes. For example, the bamboo Phyllostachys vivax has 4 different chimeras: one has an all green stem, one has a green stem with yellow stripes, one has a gold stem with lots of green stripes, and one is all gold with a few green stripes. Bamboos only flower every 100 years or so, so they are an exception and tend to asexually mutate faster than most plants.

At any rate, you should not have to rejuvenate a successive clone chain for any genetic reason. In terms of decades, they will not drift genetically anyway. They may contract viruses though, and in that case they will never get rid of them and go into decline. Any clones will also have the virus. Tobacco mosaic can infect Cannabis. They may also get run down in terms of poor growing conditions, but put them onto a good environment and they will spring back. You may get a poorly rooted clone, or a clone that has a fungal infection, or has been attacked by mites. Mites are a growing issue now. Also root pathogens (phylloxera) are getting into Cannabis crops in California. They seem to be coming from grape roots in grape vineyards. That is what I have heard through the grape vine anyway. I have cloned lots and lots of many types of plants, including Cannabis, roses, orchids, cane berries, maples, bamboos, fruit trees and garlic. I have also done a lot of tissue culture cloning, but it is the same as rooting cuttings and making plant divisions. They pop up with the same exact flowers, growth habits and phenotypes. Other than chimeras in bamboo, I have never had a plant throw a sport.
 
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good information Big Sur

Genetic drift applies only to populations of organisms that reproduce sexually, implies recombination of genetic material from two parents.With cloning we’re dealing with only one organism.
What people mistakenly call genetic drift is actually "sporting". Sporting occurs when mother plants undergo certain stressors and diseases, changing the way the clone's genes are expressed (Epigenetic)...

as well as keeping away stress, infections and diseases from our mother plants, a good practice of cloning is important (the act of cloning is a stressful act)
 
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Also does anyone have any dosage advice or experience with 6-benzylaminopurine and cannabis? Seems like with the right dosage topping or flowering early for height restrictions would be a thing of the past. I run 200ppm in my feed and plants seem to dig it and branch well.

Looks like im staying just ahead of time and space.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11240-019-01693-5

And just to add through my experiences concentrations needed for desired effect vary per strain. Some are more sensitive while others need higher dosages to bush out.
 
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I hav seen wat may be called genetic drift happen before, were clone lines have become bland an seem to lose ther kick an power. Might have something to do with how the genetics hav been looked after an kept wer ther adapting over a long period ov time to a protected indoir environment an 20/30 years of being under artifical lighting wich hasnt been ideal.Maybe using higher levels of uv lighting long term an a fuller spectrum and a beter recration of the original environment the genetics have originated from can reverse these issues.
 
good information Big Sur

Genetic drift applies only to populations of organisms that reproduce sexually, implies recombination of genetic material from two parents.With cloning we’re dealing with only one organism.
What people mistakenly call genetic drift is actually "sporting". Sporting occurs when mother plants undergo certain stressors and diseases, changing the way the clone's genes are expressed (Epigenetic)...

as well as keeping away stress, infections and diseases from our mother plants, a good practice of cloning is important (the act of cloning is a stressful act)

Sports occur, but they are rather rare in most plants. Roses have several patented varieties that were originally sports. For example the rose "Chicago Peace" was a sport of "Peace". Also sports are way more than genetic drift, and they tend not to revert. They are a new plant genetically. Similar asexual changes occur in plants like bamboos, where they throw chimeras. Typically 4 chimeras per bamboo species of the same phenotypes. For example, the bamaboo Phyllostachys vivax has 4 chimeras that they can rotate through. I have one Phy. vivax here that has gone through all 4 in one potted specimen. They are Phy. vivax type form that has all green culms; Phy. vivax Aureocaulis that has golden culms with random thin green stripes; Phy. vivax Huangwenzhu that has a green culms with a yellow sulcus (fat regular stripes); and Phy. vivax Huangwenzhu Inversa that has yellow culms with a green sulcus. Lots of books and sources consider these as separate species. However, in my case (which is common) the plant rotated through the 4 'species'. I think that cold stress pushed them through the changes. Bamboos are monocots though. And bamboos rarely flower, most once in every 100 years. They bloom at the same time worldwide, and they almost all die after blooming.

But in the case of sexual 'genetic drift' and especially in the case of Cannabis, rapid changes after only a few generations of localized breeding is the result of gene switching. The plants adapt to local climate and switch the genes on and off to adapt. Its a genetic mechanism that also occurs in humans. In humans, if you are a male and your father or grandfather was exposed to a significant famine before you or your father were conceived, you are likely to live about 10 years longer than if they were not. It is not a mutation, it is simply switching genes turning on and off other genes in your DNA and passing them on to near term generations. This has been noted in Cannabis growing the US going back to about 1700 with hemp. I have some books that have records of farmers noting that hemp reverts to a crappy strain within about 4 generations of using seeds from local grown crops. They advised careful selection of seed stock, or getting more seed from Europe to 'renew' the vigor and quality of the plants. Or to save a large store of seeds from the first generation of local grown hemp. Arjan notes this in several of his Strain Hunter videos as well. He found that if people planted his strains and used the seed in successive generations, after 4 years the quality notably declines. For this reason I mainly do F1 runs (or IBL1 runs, whatever you want to call first generation landrace breeding), and I do not do more than F2 runs for seed. The buggers cannot adapt to local conditions in that few a number of generations.
 
In the case of clones, I can take a 'run down' clone and revive it. It is not genetic drift, or sport decline, or really anything to do with genetics. It is just poor plant stock. I have cloned thousands of plants, and hundreds of different species of plants for my nurseries in California and Oregon. I have also dabbled in tissue culture cloning with cymbidium orchids and bamboos. I have also cloned hundreds of Cannabis plants. Some cuttings do better than others, but mainly the difference I have found is with rooting. Some clones set up better root systems than others. Poor roots, poor plants. Good roots, good plants. Some strains clone better than others as well. For example, original White Widow remains the easiest strain that I have cloned. I cloned about 40 one year, thinking I would lose or have to cull half of them. Well, they ALL rooted nicely. So I had a LOT of White Widow plants that year. Other strains I have had like Erdbeer just refused to clone at all. No roots. Even with hormones. No roots. In general, I root more clones than I need from cuttings, and select the best and most vigorous, and toss the rest.
 
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