Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and picked up by a dwindling number of people who know exactly what they are after. It is easy to read that as the end of a technology. It is closer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the bookshop next door expands. Every feminized line began as a regular one, every new cross needs a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists because someone kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines going back to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a buyer gives up by never seeing one, and how to get value with a pack rather than a copy.
The Other Half of the Genome
The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is « the one that makes pollen », and to a flower grower that is all it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and half is chosen with the same attention as the female.
A male contributes growth habit, hybrid vigour, flowering speed, resistance to mould and pests, trichome density and the aromatic chemistry just as the female does; it just expresses several of those traits less because it does not grows a finished flower. Those who work with regular seed invest at least as much time selecting males as females, and this is the work that a feminized cross inherits and can never replicate. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it cannot give a different line of selected genes.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
Much of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Every round of that selfing halves the remaining genetic diversity, and after two generations what is left is essentially one plant repeated across marginally different ways.
This is acceptable for a grower who needs that one plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Recessive weaknesses surface: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Qualities that existed in the original line but not in the chosen clone disappear out of the gene pool altogether. A decade of this produces a market full with variations of a dozen plants, and a anyone trying to create something different finds there is nothing left to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the pool, and it only exists if somebody keep growing it.
Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About
Articles on selecting females are easy to find; advice on choosing males is scarce, because most people do not keep one past the first week of flower to judge. For a grower making seed, the following are the signs breeders watch for.
- Timing. A male that shows sex early and matures in step with the females is far more workable than an early one that releases pollen before the female is ready.
- Structure. Short internodes, a strong main stem and branching that resembles the intended female shape are inherited; a lanky, weak-stemmed male hands that down too.
- Restraint. Males that dump enormous quantities of pollen early are often the least desirable in other respects; many breeders favour moderate producers.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with resin on its sepals and a strong scent suggests it carries the terpene genes that are worth passing on.
- Stability. A male that also shows female flowers under normal conditions is rejected without exception; the trait is the one thing worth carrying into a line.
What 10 Seeds Actually Give You
A error first-time regular-seed growers make is seeing 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 running it is to see the range and select 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 cull or assess for breeding. Among the females, look for real variation: stature, flowering time, smell, bud structure, tolerance. That variation is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who keeps the strongest female and male now owns something a feminized pack cannot supply: a pair of chosen parents that are theirs.
Making Your Own Seed
Owning selected parents means producing the next generation, and here the choices multiply. Three methods account for most of what small-scale breeders do.
- Selected cross. One picked male on one or a few chosen females, every other plant else removed. The seeds inherit the qualities of two specific plants and express narrower spread than the parent pack. Done over generations with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is made.
- Open pollination. Allow every male pollinate every female. It keeps the whole diversity of the line, makes a large volume of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how traditional lines are kept going, and it is the right method when the aim is preservation not refinement.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen offspring again to one of its original parents to lock in a specific quality. It narrows the range quickly and is useful when a single parent has something worth concentrating and the second brought mostly vigour.
All three need nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making requires.
Keeping Old Lines Alive
Some lines have never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis grew over centuries, and heirloom crosses from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed since the breeders maintaining them treat the population as the whole value, and selfing a single plant would erase exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.
Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a modern hybrid. There will be wide variation, long flowering times in tropical lines, tall plants, and qualities that make sense in a field but not in a small room. Expect too flavours and chemistry that no longer exist in the commercial market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its region of origin and the generation it has been reproduced from the original collection.
When the Library Is the Wrong Shop
None of the above turns regular seed into the best choice for everyone, and pretending that it is does the category no favours.
A grower with space for a handful of plants who needs each one of them to finish is far better served with feminized seed. The same is anyone unable to check the plants each day during the onset of flower, because a late male in a confined space seeds the whole crop inside days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony has no use from a pack they cannot select from. And a buyer who is after a known clone-only plant reproduced as closely as possible is 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 of their own; for anyone else the back shelf is best left where it is.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in unmarked packaging with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and no on the exterior to indicate 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 lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others the two are permitted under local rules or neither is. Checking the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.
