Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: smaller every year, priced lower than the feminized packs beside it, and picked up by a dwindling number of people who know exactly what they are after. It is tempting to read that as the end of a technology. It is closer to the truth to read it as a library shrinking while the bookshop next door grows. Every female-only line started as a regular one, every new cross requires a male at some point in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that survives at all survives only because someone held onto regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines going back to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article sets out the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a buyer loses by never seeing one, and how to work with a pack rather than a clone.
What a Male Plant Is Actually For
The easy description of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and for a flower grower that is all it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and that half is chosen with the same care as the female.
A male passes on growth habit, hybrid vigour, flowering time, resistance to mould and pests, resin density and the aromatic profile exactly as the female does; it just expresses several of those traits less since it never produce a finished flower. Those who work with regular seed invest as much time selecting males as females, which is the work that a feminized line inherits and can never replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it does not give a different line of selected genes.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
A great deal of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, treated and crossed with itself. Each generation of that selfing cuts in half the surviving genetic diversity, and after a couple of rounds what remains is close to one plant repeated in slightly different forms.
That is acceptable for a consumer who needs that single plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Hidden weaknesses emerge: intersex tendencies, weak stems, susceptibility to one particular mould. Traits that existed in the parent line but not in the selected clone disappear out of the gene pool entirely. A generation of this leaves a market crowded with versions of a dozen plants, and a breeder wanting to make something different discovers there is little left to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the pool, and it only persist if people keep growing it.
Reading a Male Plant
Guides on choosing females are easy to find; advice on choosing males is scarce, since most growers do not keep one past the first week of flower to look. For a grower making seed, these are the signs breeders watch for.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a pollen sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its flower parts and a clear scent indicates it holds the resin genes worth passing on.
- Restraint. Plants that release enormous amounts of pollen early are often also the least selected in other respects; breeders prefer moderate producers.
- Timing. A male that declares sex first and matures in step with the females is more useful than a very early one that releases pollen before the female is ready.
- Structure. Short internodes, a strong central stem and a frame that matches the intended female habit are inherited; a lanky, floppy male hands that on too.
A Pack Is a Population
The error first-time regular-seed growers fall into is seeing a pack as 10 chances at the one plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the point of growing it is to observe the spread and select from it.
About half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds gives around five females to evaluate and five males to discard or assess for breeding. Within the females, expect real differences: stature, finishing time, aroma, density, tolerance. This variation 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 supply: a pair of chosen parents that are their own.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning selected parents is only worth something if producing the next generation, and there the options open up. Three approaches account for most of what home breeders attempt.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or a few chosen females, every other plant else culled. The seeds carry the qualities of the two selected plants and show less variation than the original pack. Repeated over several rounds with stable selection, this is how a new line is made.
- Backcross. Take a selected seedling back to one of its parents to lock in a particular quality. It narrows the genetics fast and is used when a single parent has something worth concentrating and the other contributed mostly vigour.
- Open pollination. Allow every male pollinate each female. It preserves the whole range of the line, produces a large quantity of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how traditional lines are maintained alive, and it is the right approach when the goal is preservation rather than improvement.
All three require nothing more than a separate space for the male, a paintbrush or a paper bag, and patience. None of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making does.
Landraces and Heirloom Lines
Some lines were never feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from places where cannabis grew for centuries, and heirloom crosses from the early decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed because the people maintaining them regard diversity as the entire point, and reversing a single clone would erase exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.
Running a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a commercial hybrid. Expect large variation, extended flowering times in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and traits that made sense in a mountain valley but not under a small room. There will be also aromas and effects that do not exist in the commercial market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its origin of origin and the generation it has been reproduced since the first collection.
The Honest Exclusions
None of the above makes regular seed into the best choice for everyone, and claiming otherwise does the category no favours.
A grower with room for a handful of plants who wants each one of them to finish is better off with feminized seed. So is anyone who cannot afford to inspect the plants every day around the onset of flower, because a missed male in a small space ruins the whole crop within days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a population they cannot select from. And anyone who wants a known famous plant repeated as closely as possible is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to hold onto and at some point to make something new; for anyone else the regular shelf is best ignored where it is.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in plain parcels with the original packs sealed inside and nothing on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, because seed importation is not permitted there. Seed law differs sharply by country: in a good number of places buying seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others the two are permitted under local rules or both is. Knowing the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article is legal advice.
