Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked lower than the feminized packs beside it, and bought by a dwindling number of people who understand exactly what they are after. It is easy to see that as the end of a technology. It is nearer to the truth to read it as a library losing shelves while the bookshop next door grows. Every female-only line began as a regular one, each new cross needs a male at some point in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists only because somebody held onto regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines going back to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article makes the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a buyer loses by not growing one, and how to work with a population rather than a copy.
The Other Half of the Genome
The easy description of a male cannabis plant is « a pollen source », and for a flower grower that is the whole of it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and that half is chosen with the same care as the female.
A male contributes growth habit, hybrid vigour, maturation speed, tolerance to mould and pests, resin production and the terpene profile exactly as the female does; it just expresses several of those qualities less since it does not grows a finished flower. Breeders who breed with regular seed spend at least as much time selecting males as females, and this is the work that a feminized line inherits and cannot repeat. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it does not give a second set of selected traits.
The Narrowing
Much of the feminized catalogue is built from S1 seeds: a single famous clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Every round of that selfing cuts in half the remaining genetic diversity, and after a couple of rounds what remains is close to one plant repeated across slightly different ways.
This is fine for a grower who needs that one plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Recessive weaknesses emerge: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, susceptibility to a particular mould. Traits that were present in the original line but absent in the selected clone disappear out of the gene pool altogether. A decade of such breeding leaves a market crowded with variations of the same few plants, and a anyone wanting to create something new discovers there is nothing remaining to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the market, and it only exists as long as somebody keep growing it.
How to Judge a Male
Articles on choosing females are everywhere; advice on choosing males is rare, because most growers do not keep one past the first week of flower to judge. For anyone producing seed, the following are the marks breeders watch for.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a clear scent indicates it holds the resin genes worth keeping.
- Restraint. Males that dump huge amounts of pollen early are frequently the least desirable genetically; many breeders favour moderate producers.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a strong central stem and branching that resembles the desired female shape are inherited; a stretched, floppy male hands that on too.
- Timing. A male that declares sex first and flowers at the same pace as the females is more useful than an early one that releases pollen before any female is receptive.
A Pack Is a Population
A error first-time regular-seed growers fall into is treating a pack as 10 attempts at the same plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the point of growing it is to observe the spread and choose from it.
Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to evaluate and five males to either cull or assess for breeding. Among the females, look for real differences: stature, flowering time, smell, density, resistance. That variation is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who takes cuttings from the strongest female and the best male has something a feminized pack cannot supply: a line of chosen parents that are theirs.
Making Your Own Seed
Holding chosen parents is only worth something if producing the next generation, and there the options multiply. Three methods cover most of what small-scale breeders do.
- Open pollination. Allow every male reach each female. It preserves the whole range of the line, produces a generous volume of seed, and does no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained alive, and it is the correct approach when the goal is preservation not improvement.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen offspring back to one of its parents to lock in a specific trait. It narrows the range quickly and is useful when a single parent shows something worth concentrating and the other contributed mainly vigour.
- Selected cross. One picked male on one or a few chosen females, every other plant else culled. The offspring carry the traits of the two selected plants and express narrower spread than the original pack. Repeated over several rounds with stable selection, this is how a new line is built.
Each of these need only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a small bag, and patience. None of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized production does.
Keeping Old Lines Alive
Some lines were never feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from places where cannabis grew for centuries, and old crosses from the first decades of modern breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the breeders keeping them regard the population as the entire value, and selfing a single plant would erase precisely what makes the line worth the trouble of preserving.
Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a modern hybrid. Expect wide variation, extended flowering times in tropical lines, tall plants, and traits that make sense in a field but not in a tent. There will be too aromas and chemistry that no longer appear in the commercial market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line marked with its origin of collection and the number of generations it has been reproduced since the original collection.
The Honest Exclusions
Nothing of the above makes regular seed the best choice for everyone, and claiming that it is does the product no favours.
A grower with space for three plants who wants each one of them to flower is better off with feminized seed. So is a grower unable to inspect the plants every day during the onset of flower, because a missed male in a small space ruins everything within days. Someone running a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a population they cannot choose from. And anyone who is after a specific famous plant reproduced exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to select, to hold onto and at some point to make something of their own; for anyone else the regular shelf is best ignored alone.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in plain packaging with the original packs sealed inside and no on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, as seed importation is not permitted there. Seed law differs widely by country: in many places owning seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others the two are permitted under licence or both is. Knowing the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article is legal advice.