Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced lower than the feminized packs beside it, and bought by a dwindling group of people who understand exactly what they are after. It is tempting to see that as obsolescence. It is nearer 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 needs a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists only because someone held onto regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines going back to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is meant to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the case 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 instead of a copy.
Not Just Pollen
The easy account of a male cannabis plant is «the one that makes pollen», and for a flower grower that is the whole of it. To 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, flowering time, resistance to mould and pests, resin production and the aromatic profile exactly as the female does; it just expresses some of those traits less since it never produce a finished flower. Those who work with regular seed invest at least as much time selecting males as females, and this is the effort that a feminized cross borrows and can never repeat. Reversing a female gives pollen; it cannot give a second line of selected genes.
The Narrowing
A great deal of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, treated and crossed with itself. Every round of that process cuts in half the remaining genetic diversity, and after a couple of generations what remains is essentially one plant expressed in marginally different ways.
That is acceptable for a consumer who wants that one plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Hidden faults emerge: hermaphrodite tendencies, brittle stems, susceptibility to one particular mould. Qualities that existed in the original line but absent in the selected clone vanish from the population altogether. A generation of this produces a market crowded with versions of a dozen plants, and a anyone wanting to make something new finds there is nothing left to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the market, and that reservoir only persist as long as somebody grows it.
Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About
Guides on selecting females are easy to find; guidance on choosing males is rare, since most people do not keep one long enough to judge. For anyone producing seed, the following are the signs breeders watch for.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its sepals and a strong scent suggests it holds the terpene genes worth keeping.
- Restraint. Males that release huge amounts of pollen all at once are frequently also the least selected in other respects; breeders prefer steady producers.
- Stability. A male that also shows female flowers under ordinary stress is discarded without exception; the tendency is the one thing worth carrying forward.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a thick main stem and a frame that resembles the intended female habit are passed on; a stretched, weak-stemmed male passes that down too.
Thinking in Numbers
A mistake first-time regular-seed buyers make is treating a pack as 10 attempts at the one plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a sample 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, so a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to evaluate and five males to discard or assess for breeding. Among the females, look for noticeable variation: height, flowering time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. That spread is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who takes cuttings from the best female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack cannot supply: a line of selected parents which are their own.
Three Ways to Cross
Holding selected parents means making the next batch, and there the options open up. Three approaches account for most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Backcross. Take a selected seedling back to one of its original parents to fix a specific trait. It tightens the genetics fast and is useful when one plant shows something worth keeping and the second contributed mainly vigour.
- Selected cross. One chosen male to one or a few picked females, everything else culled. The offspring carry the qualities of the two selected plants and show less variation than the original pack. Done over generations with stable selection, this is how a new line is made.
- Open pollination. Let each male pollinate every female. It preserves the full diversity of the line, makes a large quantity of seed, and does no selection at all. This is how traditional lines are maintained alive, and it is the correct approach when the goal is preservation not refinement.
All three need nothing more than a separate space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and patience. None of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making does.
Landraces and Heirloom Lines
A number of lines were never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis grew for centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the early decades of modern breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the people keeping them treat the population as the whole point, and reversing a single plant would destroy exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a commercial hybrid. Expect large variation, extended flowering periods in equatorial lines, tall plants, and qualities that made sense in a field but not in a small room. Expect also flavours and effects that no longer exist in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line marked with its origin of collection and the generation it has been grown out since the original collection.
When the Library Is the Wrong Shop
None of the above makes regular seed the best option for everyone, and pretending that it is does the product no favours.
A grower with space for a handful of plants who wants each one of them to finish is better served with feminized seed. So is anyone who cannot afford to check the plants each day during the onset of flower, because a missed male in a small space ruins everything within days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a pack they cannot choose from. And a buyer who wants a specific clone-only cut reproduced exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to select, to hold onto and at some point to make something new; for everyone else the regular shelf is best ignored alone.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in unmarked packaging with the original packs sealed inside and no on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed import is restricted there. Seed law differs widely by country: in many places owning seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under local rules or both is. Knowing the position where you live is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article is legal advice.