Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: smaller every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs beside it, and bought by a shrinking number of people who know exactly what they are after. It is easy to see 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 started as a regular one, each new cross requires a male at some point in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all survives only because somebody held onto regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines going back to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the argument for that half-male pack: what the male contributes, what a grower gives up by not growing one, and how to work with a population rather than a clone.
Not Just Pollen
The lazy account of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and to a flower grower that is the whole of it. For 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 contributes growth habit, vigour, flowering time, resistance to mould and pests, resin production and the aromatic profile exactly as the female does; it simply shows some of those traits less because it does not produce a finished flower. Breeders who breed with regular seed invest at least as much time choosing males as females, and this is the effort that a feminized cross inherits and cannot replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it cannot give a different set of selected genes.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
Much of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Each generation of that process cuts in half the remaining genetic diversity, and after a couple of rounds what is left is close to one plant repeated across marginally different forms.
This is acceptable for a grower who wants that one plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Hidden weaknesses emerge: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Qualities that were present in the parent line but not in the selected clone vanish from the population entirely. A decade of this produces a market full with variations of the same few plants, and a breeder trying to make something new finds there is nothing left to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the market, and that reservoir only exists if somebody grows it.
Reading a Male Plant
Articles on selecting females are everywhere; advice on picking males is rare, since most growers never keep one past the first week of flower to look. For a grower making seed, these are the marks breeders look for.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its sepals and a clear scent indicates it carries the resin traits worth passing on.
- Stability. A male that also shows female pistils under normal stress is rejected outright; that trait is the one thing worth carrying forward.
- Structure. Short internodes, a strong central stem and branching that resembles the intended female habit are passed on; a lanky, floppy male passes that on too.
- Timing. A male that shows sex early and matures in step with the females is more useful than an early one that releases pollen before the female is ready.
- Restraint. Plants that dump enormous amounts of pollen all at once are often the least desirable in other respects; breeders prefer steady producers.
What 10 Seeds Actually Give You
The error first-time regular-seed growers fall into is seeing a pack as 10 chances at the one plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the value of running it is to see the spread and choose from it.
About half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives something like five females to compare and five males to cull or judge for breeding. Within the females, look for real variation: height, finishing time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. This variation is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who keeps the strongest female and male has something a feminized pack cannot supply: a line of selected parents which are theirs.
From One Pack to the Next
Owning chosen parents means making the next generation, and there the choices multiply. The main approaches account for most of what home breeders attempt.
- Backcross. Cross a selected seedling again to one of its original parents to lock in a specific trait. It narrows the genetics quickly and is used when one plant has something worth concentrating and the other contributed mainly vigour.
- Selected cross. One picked male on one or a few picked females, every other plant else culled. The offspring carry the qualities of the two specific plants and express less variation than the original pack. Done over generations with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is made.
- Open pollination. Let each male pollinate each female. It keeps the whole range of the line, produces a generous volume of seed, and involves no choosing at all. This is how traditional lines are maintained going, and it is the right approach when the aim is preservation not refinement.
Each of these require nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a paintbrush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. None of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making requires.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
Some lines were never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis grew for centuries, and old crosses 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 selfing a single plant would erase precisely what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a modern hybrid. There will be large variation, extended flowering periods in equatorial lines, tall plants, and qualities that made sense in a mountain valley but not in a small room. There will be also flavours and effects that no longer appear in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its region of collection and the generation it has been reproduced from the original collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
Nothing of the above turns regular seed the right choice for everyone, and pretending that it is would the product no service.
A grower with space for three plants who wants each one of them to finish is far better off with feminized seed. So is a grower who cannot afford to check the plants every day around the onset of flower, because a late male in a small space ruins everything within days. Someone running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a pack they cannot select from. And anyone who is after a specific clone-only plant reproduced 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 at some point to make something new; for everyone else the back shelf is safely ignored alone.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in plain packaging with the original packs sealed inside and no on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed importation is restricted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in a good number of places buying seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed under licence or neither is. Knowing the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article is legal advice.