Plant propagation has been around since the origins of civilization. From the farmers of ancient Summer to the first civilizations of Egypt, farmers utilized plant propagation to feed their people. This method proved to be superior to all other methods of growing because it saved time, increased yields and ensured each harvest would be similar to the last. Today we use a method called cloning to propagate cannabis commercially. This unnatural method to reproducing cannabis plants is superior to starting from the more natural way, from seed, as the genetics are known from the propagated mother plant and consistent harvests have already been achieved. If cloning were not possible, every harvest would vary widely in both quality and yields because we would be forced to grow from seed. And although growing from seed has distinct advantages, knowing the exact genetics and ensuring a particular final outcome is not guaranteed as each seed will inherently have different genes. In addition to quality variance, if we could not clone cannabis, prices would skyrocket as the overall duration to achieve a final product would be greatly increased; analogous to a bottle of fine wine that has been aged for many years. Furthermore, current greenhouse light deprivation techniques would not be useful growing from seed and only 1 harvest per year following the natural light cycle would be possible.
Today, clones are traded from nursery to greenhouse with exact genetics in mind and proven guaranteed results. Master growers know exactly what strains they are getting, what conditions that particular strain likes, and what yields and percentages they can expect at different times of year. They can harvest year around by using clones, controlled environments and light deprivation techniques allowing them to produce 4 times as many harvests annually. And lastly and maybe most importantly, cloning allows us to preserve genetic strains that are the most popular for many, many years thru the use of moms and select breeding and re-breeding. Although not every single plant in the kingdom is propagatable, we should all be happy knowing cannabis is one of the species that's easy to propagate.
