Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: smaller every year, marked lower than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a shrinking number of people who know exactly what they are looking for. It is tempting to see that as the end of a technology. It is closer to the truth to read it as a library shrinking while the paperback rack next door grows. Every female-only line started as a regular one, every new cross requires a male at some point in its pedigree, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists only because somebody kept 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 meant to be a population, not a single plant. This article makes the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a grower gives up by never seeing one, and how to work with a population instead of a copy.
The Other Half of the Genome
The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, 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 selected with the same attention as the female.
A male contributes structure, hybrid vigour, flowering speed, tolerance to mould and pests, resin production and the aromatic chemistry exactly as the female does; it just expresses several of those qualities less since it never produce a smokable flower. Those who breed with regular seed spend at least as much time selecting males as females, which is the effort that a feminized line inherits and cannot repeat. Reversing a female gives pollen; it does not give a different line of selected traits.
How Diversity Leaks Away
A great deal of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a single famous clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Each round of that selfing cuts in half the surviving genetic variation, and after two rounds what is left is essentially one plant repeated across marginally different ways.
That is fine for a consumer who needs that single plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Hidden faults surface: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Traits that were present in the original line but absent in the chosen clone disappear from the gene pool entirely. A decade of this leaves a market crowded with variations of a dozen plants, and a anyone wanting to create something different discovers there is little remaining to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the pool, and that reservoir can only exists as long as people grows it.
Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About
Articles on selecting females are everywhere; advice on choosing males is rare, because most growers do not keep one past the first week of flower to look. For a grower making seed, the following are the signs breeders watch for.
- Timing. A male that declares sex first and matures at the same pace as the females is far more workable than an early one that sheds pollen before the female is receptive.
- Restraint. Plants that release enormous amounts of pollen all at once are often also the less desirable in other respects; many breeders prefer steady shedders.
- Stability. Any male that also shows female flowers under normal stress is discarded without exception; the tendency is the one thing worth breeding forward.
- Structure. Short internodes, a thick main stem and branching that resembles the intended female habit are inherited; a stretched, floppy male hands that down too.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a strong aroma suggests it carries the resin genes worth passing on.
Thinking in Numbers
The mistake first-time regular-seed buyers make is treating a pack as 10 attempts at the one plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the value of running it is to see the range and choose from it.
About half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to compare and five males to discard or judge for breeding. Among the females, look for noticeable variation: stature, finishing time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. 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 offer: a line of chosen parents that are theirs.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning chosen parents is only worth something if making the next batch, and there the options multiply. The main methods account for most of what home breeders do.
- Open pollination. Allow each male reach every female. It keeps the whole diversity of the line, produces a generous 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 goal is preservation not improvement.
- Backcross. Cross a selected seedling back to one of its parents to lock in a particular trait. It narrows the genetics fast and is used when one plant has something worth keeping and the second contributed mostly vigour.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or several picked females, everything else culled. The offspring carry the qualities of the two specific plants and express narrower variation than the original pack. Done over several rounds with consistent selection, this is how a new line is made.
Each of these require only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and patience. Not one of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized production does.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
A number of lines were never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from places where cannabis was grown over centuries, and old hybrids from the first decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed because the people maintaining them regard diversity as the whole point, and selfing a single plant would destroy exactly what makes the line worth keeping.
Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a commercial hybrid. There will be wide variation, extended flowering times in equatorial lines, tall plants, and qualities that make sense in a field but not under a tent. There will be too flavours and chemistry that no longer exist in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its region of origin and the number of generations it has been grown out since the original collection.
When the Library Is the Wrong Shop
None of the above turns regular seed the best choice for everyone, and claiming that it is would the product no favours.
A grower with room for three plants who needs every one of them to finish is better served with feminized seed. The same is a grower who cannot afford to check the plants each day during the start of flower, since a missed male in a small space seeds the whole crop inside days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a pack they cannot choose from. And a buyer who is after a specific famous plant reproduced 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 select, to hold onto and eventually to produce something new; for everyone else the regular shelf is safely left alone.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in unmarked packaging with the original packs sealed inside and nothing on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed importation is not permitted there. Seed law differs widely 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 where you live is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article is legal advice.