That's a bit exaggeration, Kirk and Mike.
For Kirk's point, there could be genotypic difference, but selection acts on phenotypes. Phenotypes are determined by both genetics and environment. So even a particular person has a great healthy genotype (we human carried quite a lot of deleterious mutations BTW), if he/she doesn't have healthy life-style, the person might die early. I'm pretty sure that Kirk knows this, though.
Also, I'm not sure if genetics has nothing to do with this as Mike said. If it is already highly inbred (e.g. artificially selected for a long time), then the genetic variation within sibs may be low. But if it is self-fertilized progeny from habitually outcrossing species, you expect quite a bit of variations. Some do very well while others are homozygous for many deleterious mutations, and show inbreeding depression. When we deflask, we frequently see quite a bit of variations. My gut feeling is that quite a bit of variation is due to environments (e.g. position in the flask, and who was its neighbor), but some are possibly due to genetics. But Mike is trying to say that since it has been growing ok for a while until recently, it is unlikely to be genetic. It is probably likely. But you never know when the inbreeding depression is expressed. There are some early acting and late acting inbreeding depression. In other words, some mutations are expressed at a certain life-stage. What Kirk was saying is that some of these deleterious effects may not be observed until they are challenged. Mike might says that his is not self-fertilized, but similar situation can happen in outcrossing (but less likely to see extremes in OC due to the masking of deleterious genes).
Finally, genetics can be environment dependent as we all know. Some deleterious genes may not be deleterious in another environment. A plant with immunity problem can be completely ok if it is grown completely aseptically. So by providing certain environment, more plants may survive well even if there are some mismatch between the genotypes and environment. As a tangential note, this is related to the big problem of ex-situ conservation (unconscious selection for cultivated environment and dysfunctional flowers).
But I agree that it is more productive to figure out how to change culture environments than giving up.