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Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: smaller every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs beside it, and picked up by a dwindling group of people who understand exactly what they are after. It is tempting to read that as the end of a technology. It is nearer to the truth to read it as a library losing shelves while the paperback rack next door grows. Every female-only line started as a regular one, every new cross needs a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all survives because somebody held onto regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines going back to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is meant to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a buyer loses by not seeing one, and how to get value with a population instead of a clone.
The Other Half of the Genome
The lazy account of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and for a flower grower that is all it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and half is chosen with the same attention as the mother.
A male passes on structure, vigour, maturation time, resistance to mould and pests, resin production and the aromatic profile exactly as the female does; it just expresses some of those qualities less because it does not produce a finished flower. Those who breed with regular seed invest as much time choosing males as females, and this is the effort that a feminized cross inherits and cannot replicate. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it cannot give a second line of selected genes.
The Narrowing
Much of the feminized catalogue is built from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, treated and crossed with itself. Each round of that selfing cuts in half the surviving genetic variation, and after two generations what remains is close to one plant repeated in marginally different ways.
This is fine for a grower who wants that one plant. It is a loss for everyone who comes after. Hidden faults emerge: intersex tendencies, weak stems, susceptibility to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the original line but absent in the selected clone disappear out of the population altogether. A generation of such breeding produces a market full with variations of the same few plants, and a anyone trying to make something different finds there is nothing remaining to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the pool, and that reservoir can only persist as long as somebody keep growing it.
Reading a Male Plant
Articles on selecting females are easy to find; advice on picking males is rare, because most growers never keep one long enough to judge. For a grower producing seed, these are the marks breeders look for.
- Timing. A male that shows sex first and matures in step with the females is more useful than an early one that sheds pollen before the female is receptive.
- Structure. Short internodes, a strong central stem and a frame that matches the desired female habit are inherited; a stretched, floppy male passes that on too.
- Restraint. Plants that dump huge amounts of pollen early are frequently the less selected in other respects; breeders favour steady producers.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a pollen sac and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a clear scent indicates it holds the resin traits that are worth passing on.
What 10 Seeds Actually Give You
The mistake new regular-seed growers make is seeing a pack as 10 chances at the one plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the value of growing it is to see the range and select from it.
About half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to compare and five males to cull or assess for breeding. Among the females, expect real variation: height, flowering time, smell, density, resistance. That variation is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who keeps the strongest female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack cannot supply: a line of selected parents which are theirs.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning chosen parents is only worth something if producing the next generation, and here the choices open up. The main approaches cover most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen seedling again to one of its parents to lock in a particular trait. It tightens the genetics quickly and is useful when a single plant has something worth keeping and the second brought mainly vigour.
- Selected cross. One picked male to one or several picked females, everything else removed. The seeds inherit the traits of two specific plants and show narrower spread than the parent pack. Done over generations with consistent choices, this is how a new line is built.
- Open pollination. Allow every male pollinate every female. It preserves the full range of the line, makes a large volume of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how traditional lines are kept going, and it is the right approach when the goal is preservation not improvement.
Each of these require 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.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
Some lines were never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis grew over centuries, and old crosses from the first decades of modern breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the people keeping them regard the population as the whole point, and reversing a single plant would erase precisely what makes the line worth preserving.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a commercial hybrid. Expect wide variation, long flowering times in tropical lines, lanky plants, and traits that made sense in a field but not under a tent. Expect too aromas and effects that do not exist in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line marked with its region of collection and the number of generations it has been reproduced since the first collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
None of the above turns regular seed the best choice for everyone, and pretending otherwise does the product no favours.
A grower with space for three plants who needs every one of them to finish is better served with feminized seed. So is a grower unable to check the plants every day around the onset of flower, since a missed male in a confined space ruins everything within days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a population they cannot choose from. And a buyer who is after a known famous cut reproduced as closely as possible is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to select, to keep and at some point to make something new; for anyone else the regular shelf is best left alone.
Ordering and the Law
Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in plain parcels with the breeder’s packs intact inside and nothing on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed import is not permitted there. Seed law differs widely by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others the two are allowed under local rules or neither is. Knowing the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and no part of this article should be read as legal advice.