Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced lower than the feminized packs beside it, and picked up by a shrinking 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 shrinking while the paperback rack next door grows. Every female-only line started as a regular one, each new cross requires a male somewhere in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists because somebody held onto regular seed. Specialists 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 argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a buyer loses by never seeing one, and how to get value with a pack rather than a clone.
The Other Half of the Genome
The easy account of a male cannabis plant is «a pollen source», and to a flower grower that is all it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and that half is chosen with the same care as the mother.
A male contributes structure, vigour, maturation speed, tolerance to mould and pests, resin production and the terpene profile just as the female does; it simply shows several of those qualities less since it does not produce a finished flower. Those who breed with regular seed invest as much time choosing males as females, which is the effort that a feminized cross inherits and can never repeat. Reversing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a different set of selected traits.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
A great deal of the feminized market is built from S1 seeds: a single famous clone, treated and crossed with itself. Each generation of that selfing cuts in half the remaining genetic variation, and after two generations what is left is essentially one plant expressed in marginally different ways.
That is fine for a consumer who needs that single plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Recessive weaknesses emerge: hermaphrodite tendencies, brittle stems, susceptibility to one particular mould. Traits that existed in the original line but absent in the chosen clone disappear out of the gene pool entirely. A decade of this produces a market full with versions of the same few plants, and a breeder trying to create something different finds there is nothing left to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the market, and that reservoir only persist if people grows it.
How to Judge a Male
Articles on selecting females are easy to find; guidance on picking males is rare, because most growers never keep one long enough to judge. For a grower making seed, these are the signs breeders watch for.
- Timing. A male that shows sex first and matures at the same pace as the females is more workable than an early one that releases pollen before any female is receptive.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a pollen cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a strong aroma indicates it holds the resin traits worth keeping.
- Stability. Any male that also forms female flowers under normal stress is discarded without exception; the tendency is the one thing anyone wants breeding into a line.
- Structure. Short internodes, a thick main stem and a frame that matches the desired female shape are passed on; a stretched, floppy male hands that down too.
- Restraint. Plants that dump huge quantities of pollen all at once are often also the less desirable genetically; many breeders favour moderate shedders.
A Pack Is a Population
The error first-time regular-seed growers fall into is treating a pack as 10 attempts at the same plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the point of growing it is to observe the spread and select from it.
Roughly half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to evaluate and five males to either discard or assess for breeding. Among the females, expect real differences: height, flowering time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. That spread is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who takes cuttings from the strongest female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack cannot supply: a line of selected parents which are theirs.
Making Your Own Seed
Holding selected parents is only worth something if making the next batch, and there the options open up. Three methods cover most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Backcross. Take a chosen offspring back to one of its parents to fix a specific quality. It tightens the genetics quickly and is useful when one plant has something worth keeping and the second contributed mainly vigour.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or several picked females, everything else culled. The seeds carry the traits of the two specific plants and show narrower spread than the original pack. Repeated over generations with consistent selection, this is how a new line is made.
- Open pollination. Allow every male reach 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 landrace lines are kept alive, and it is the right approach when the aim is preservation rather than refinement.
Each of these need nothing more than a separate space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and patience. Not one of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized production requires.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
Some lines have never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from places where cannabis grew for centuries, and heirloom crosses from the first decades of modern breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the people keeping them treat diversity as the whole value, and selfing a single plant would destroy precisely what makes the line worth preserving.
Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a commercial hybrid. Expect wide variation, extended flowering times in equatorial lines, tall plants, and traits that make sense in a field but not under a tent. Expect also flavours and chemistry that no longer exist in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its region of origin and the number of generations it has been reproduced since the first collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
Nothing of the above turns regular seed the best choice for everyone, and pretending otherwise does the product no service.
A grower with space for three plants who needs each one of them to finish is far better served with feminized seed. The same is a grower unable to check the plants each day around the onset of flower, since a missed male in a small space ruins everything inside days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a pack they cannot select from. And anyone who wants a known 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 choose, to hold onto and at some point to produce something of their own; for everyone else the regular shelf is best ignored where it is.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds sends 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 owning seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under licence or both is. Knowing the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.