Has anyone ever succeeded in getting a stunted seedling to grow?

I have encountered this problem with other species besides cannabis: You plant seeds and get a one to sprout and start growing but then it just stalls out and never amounts to anything. It probably results from using older seeds that have been treated poorly in terms of storage.

I have tried using fertilizers that are supposed to be rich in micronutrients and tweaking the pH of the water but no luck so far. I tried Super Thrive, which is supposed to contain a plant growth hormone, also no luck.

Based on what a botany professor told me back in the 1980s, I fear that it’s pretty much impossible to reverse this. Once a plant gets stunted, it’s going to stay that way. I would love to be wrong about that but I’m not optimistic.

I can think of one possible remedy that I have not tried: tissue culture. A stunted plant still has some reasonably healthy tissue, so maybe it could be removed and cloned by tissue culture… but who has access to that technology?

I started many thousand seedlings from 1980 to the mid 2010's . Runts got tossed . They seldom amounted to much . That said I never paid for a seed until this year . If you have the time and the space sometimes they'll come around but by that time they're way behind all the others .

i used to just grow them out as curios, if you have the space, let it grow, but space is offten not there, spending that amount on lecky bills, most growers just toss then these days. but if you got the space, see how she go's.

I guess tissue culture may be a viable option, but thats expensive for a cut you don't know the quality of. I'd toss it as a loss. Or just give it minimal care to get through flower, if it flowers.

Give it new roots, make it a cutting.