Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a dwindling group of people who know exactly what they are looking for. It is easy to read that as the end of a technology. It is nearer to the truth to see it as a library losing shelves while the bookshop next door grows. Every feminized line started as a regular one, every new cross requires a male at some point in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that exists 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 since a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article makes the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a grower loses by not growing one, and how to work with a population instead of a copy.
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. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and half is chosen with the same care as the female.
A male passes on structure, vigour, maturation time, resistance to mould and pests, trichome density and the aromatic profile just as the female does; it simply expresses some of those qualities less because it never produce a finished flower. Breeders who breed with regular seed invest at least as much time selecting males as females, which is the work that a feminized line inherits and can never repeat. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it cannot give a different set of selected traits.
The Narrowing
Much of the feminized catalogue is built from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Each generation of that selfing cuts in half the surviving genetic diversity, and after two generations what remains is close to one plant expressed across marginally different forms.
That is acceptable for a grower who wants that one plant. It is a loss for everyone who comes after. Recessive faults emerge: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Traits that existed in the original line but not in the selected clone disappear from the population entirely. A decade of this leaves a market crowded with variations of the same few clones, and a breeder trying to make something new finds there is little remaining to work with. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that refills the market, and that reservoir only persist if somebody grows it.
Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About
Articles on selecting females are everywhere; advice on picking males is scarce, because most growers never keep one long enough to judge. For anyone making seed, these are the signs breeders watch for.
- Stability. A male that at the same time shows female flowers under ordinary stress is discarded outright; that trait is the one thing anyone wants breeding into a line.
- Timing. A male that shows sex first and flowers in step with the females is far more useful than a very early one that releases pollen before the female is receptive.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a clear scent indicates it holds the terpene traits that are worth passing on.
- Restraint. Males that release huge quantities of pollen all at once are often also the least selected in other respects; breeders favour moderate shedders.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a thick central stem and a frame that resembles the intended female shape are passed on; a stretched, weak-stemmed male passes that down too.
A Pack Is a Population
A error new regular-seed growers make is seeing a pack as 10 chances at the one plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the point of growing it is to observe the range and select from it.
About half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds gives around five females to compare and five males to either discard or assess for breeding. Within the females, expect noticeable variation: height, finishing time, aroma, bud structure, resistance. This variation is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who keeps the best female and male has something a feminized pack can never supply: a line of selected parents which are their own.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning chosen parents means making the next batch, and here the choices open up. The main approaches cover most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or a few picked females, everything else culled. The offspring inherit the traits of two specific plants and show less variation than the original pack. Repeated over several rounds with consistent selection, this is how a stable line is built.
- Open pollination. Let every male reach each female. It preserves the whole diversity of the line, makes a generous quantity of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are kept going, and it is the correct method when the aim is preservation not improvement.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen offspring back to one of its original parents to lock in a particular trait. It tightens the genetics fast and is useful when one parent shows something worth concentrating and the other contributed mostly vigour.
Each of these need only a separate space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and patience. None of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making requires.
Keeping Old Lines Alive
A number of lines have never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis was grown for centuries, and old hybrids from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed because the breeders keeping them treat diversity as the entire value, and reversing a single clone would erase exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from growing a modern hybrid. There will be wide variation, long flowering periods in tropical lines, tall plants, and traits that made sense in a mountain valley but not in a small room. There will be also flavours and effects 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 origin of origin and the generation it has been reproduced from the original collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
Nothing of the above makes regular seed the best choice for everyone, and claiming that it is does the product no service.
A grower with room for a handful of plants who needs every one of them to finish is better served with feminized seed. So is anyone unable to check the plants every day during the onset of flower, since a late male in a small space seeds the whole crop within days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a population they cannot select from. And anyone who wants a known clone-only plant repeated as closely as possible is looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to select, to keep and at some point to make something of their own; for everyone else the regular shelf is safely ignored alone.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in plain parcels with the breeder’s packs intact inside and no on the exterior to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed importation is not permitted there. Seed law varies 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 local rules or both is. Knowing the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.
