Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs beside it, and picked up by a dwindling group of people who know exactly what they are looking for. It is easy to read that as the end of a technology. It is nearer to the truth to read it as a library shrinking while the paperback rack next door expands. Every feminized line began as a regular one, every new cross needs a male at some point in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists only because someone kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines that trace to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article makes the case for that half-male pack: what the male contributes, what a grower gives up by never seeing one, and how to work with a pack rather than a copy.
The Other Half of the Genome
The easy account of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and to a flower grower that is the whole of it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and half is chosen with the same care as the mother.
A male contributes growth habit, vigour, maturation time, tolerance to mould and pests, trichome production and the terpene chemistry exactly as the female does; it just shows some of those qualities less because it does not produce a smokable flower. Breeders who work with regular seed invest as much time choosing males as females, and this is the effort that a feminized line borrows and cannot replicate. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it cannot provide a second set of selected traits.
The Narrowing
A great deal of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, treated and crossed with itself. Each generation of that selfing cuts in half the remaining genetic variation, and after two generations what remains is essentially one plant expressed in slightly different ways.
This is acceptable for a consumer who wants that single plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Recessive faults emerge: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, susceptibility to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the parent line but not in the selected clone disappear out of the gene pool entirely. A decade of such breeding leaves a market crowded with variations of a dozen clones, and a breeder trying to make something different finds there is little remaining to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the market, and it only exists if people keep growing it.
How to Judge a Male
Articles on choosing females are easy to find; advice on picking males is rare, since most growers do not keep one past the first week of flower to judge. For anyone making seed, the following are the signs breeders look for.
- Stability. Any male that also forms female pistils under ordinary conditions is discarded without exception; the tendency is the one thing worth carrying forward.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a strong main stem and a frame that matches the intended female habit are passed on; a lanky, weak-stemmed male passes that down too.
- Timing. A male that declares sex early and flowers in step with the females is more workable than an early one that releases pollen before the female is receptive.
- Restraint. Males that dump huge quantities of pollen all at once are frequently also the less selected in other respects; breeders prefer steady shedders.
A Pack Is a Population
The mistake first-time regular-seed buyers fall into is treating a pack as 10 attempts at the one plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the point of running it is to observe the spread and choose from it.
Roughly half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to compare and five males to either discard or assess for breeding. Within the females, look for real differences: height, finishing time, smell, bud structure, tolerance. This spread is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who keeps the best female and male has something a feminized pack cannot offer: a line of chosen parents which are their own.
From One Pack to the Next
Owning chosen parents is only worth something if producing the next batch, and there the options open up. The main approaches account for most of what small-scale breeders do.
- Open pollination. Let every male pollinate every female. It preserves the full diversity of the line, makes a generous volume of seed, and involves no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are kept going, and it is the correct method when the goal is preservation rather than refinement.
- Backcross. Cross a selected seedling again to one of its original parents to lock in a specific trait. It narrows the range quickly and is useful when one parent has something worth keeping and the other brought mostly vigour.
- Selected cross. One picked male to one or a few picked females, everything else culled. The offspring inherit the qualities of two specific plants and show narrower variation than the original pack. Repeated over several rounds with stable choices, this is how a stable line is made.
All three require nothing more than a separate space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and patience. Not one of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized production requires.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
Some lines have never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from places where cannabis grew for centuries, and old hybrids from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed since the people keeping them regard diversity as the whole value, and reversing a single clone would destroy exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of preserving.
Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from growing a commercial hybrid. There will be large variation, long flowering times in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and qualities that make sense in a mountain valley but not in a tent. Expect also flavours and effects that no longer appear in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its region of origin and the generation it has been grown out from the first collection.
The Honest Exclusions
Nothing of the above turns regular seed the best choice for everyone, and claiming that it is would the category no service.
A grower with room for three plants who needs each one of them to flower is better served with feminized seed. So is anyone unable to check the plants each day during the onset of flower, since a late male in a small space ruins everything within days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a population they cannot select from. And anyone who wants a specific famous plant repeated as closely as possible is looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to choose, to hold onto and eventually to make something new; for everyone else the regular shelf is best ignored alone.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in unmarked parcels with the original packs intact inside and nothing on the exterior to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, because seed importation is restricted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in many places buying seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others the two are allowed under local rules or both is. Checking the position where you live is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.