by 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 number of people who know exactly what they are after. 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 bookshop next door expands. Every feminized line started as a regular one, every new cross requires a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all survives only because someone kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines going back to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article sets out the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a buyer loses by never growing one, and how to get value with a population instead of a clone.
What a Male Plant Is Actually For
The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and for a flower grower that is all it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and half is selected with the same attention as the mother.
A male contributes structure, hybrid vigour, maturation speed, resistance to mould and pests, resin density and the terpene profile exactly as the female does; it just shows several of those traits less because it does not grows a finished flower. Breeders who work with regular seed spend at least as much time choosing males as females, which is the work that a feminized line borrows and can never repeat. Reversing a female yields pollen; it does not give a second line of selected genes.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
Much of the feminized catalogue is built from S1 seeds: a single famous clone, treated and crossed with itself. Every generation of that selfing halves the remaining genetic variation, and after two rounds what remains is essentially one plant expressed in slightly different ways.
That is acceptable for a grower who needs that one plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Recessive weaknesses emerge: intersex tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the parent line but not in the selected clone vanish out of the population altogether. A decade of such breeding produces a market full with versions of a dozen clones, and a anyone trying to create something new discovers there is little remaining to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the market, and it only exists as long as people grows it.
Reading a Male Plant
Articles on selecting females are everywhere; guidance on choosing males is rare, since most growers never keep one long enough to look. For a grower producing seed, the following are the marks breeders look for.
- Timing. A male that shows sex early and flowers at the same pace as the females is more useful than an early one that releases pollen before the female is receptive.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a pollen cluster and smell it. A male with trichomes on its sepals and a strong scent suggests it holds the resin traits worth passing on.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a strong central stem and a frame that resembles the intended female shape are passed on; a stretched, weak-stemmed male passes that on too.
- Stability. A male that at the same time shows female pistils under ordinary conditions is discarded outright; the tendency is the one thing worth carrying into a line.
- Restraint. Males that release enormous amounts of pollen early are frequently the least desirable genetically; many breeders prefer moderate shedders.
A Pack Is a Population
The error new regular-seed buyers make is seeing a pack as 10 attempts at the same plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the point of running 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 around five females to evaluate and five males to either discard or judge for breeding. Within the females, expect real differences: 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 best female and male has something a feminized pack can never offer: a pair of chosen parents which are their own.
Making Your Own Seed
Owning selected parents means producing the next generation, and here the options multiply. The main approaches account for most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Open pollination. Allow every male reach every female. It preserves the whole range of the line, produces a generous quantity of seed, and does no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained alive, and it is the correct approach when the goal is preservation not refinement.
- Selected cross. One chosen male to one or several chosen females, everything else removed. The seeds carry the traits of the two selected plants and express narrower variation than the original pack. Done over generations with stable choices, this is how a new line is made.
- Backcross. Take a chosen seedling again to one of its parents to fix a specific trait. It tightens the genetics quickly and is used when one parent has something worth keeping and the second contributed mainly vigour.
Each of these need only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and patience. Not one of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized production does.
Landraces and Heirloom Lines
A number of lines were never feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from places where cannabis grew over centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the breeders maintaining them regard diversity as the entire 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, long flowering periods in tropical lines, lanky plants, and traits that made sense in a mountain valley but not under a tent. There will be also flavours and effects that no longer appear in the commercial market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, and each line marked with its origin of collection and the generation it has been reproduced from the first collection.
When the Library Is the Wrong Shop
None of the above makes regular seed the right choice for everyone, and claiming that it is does the product no service.
A grower with room for three plants who wants each one of them to flower is better off with feminized seed. So is a grower unable to check the plants each day around the start of flower, because a late male in a confined space ruins everything within days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a population they cannot choose from. And a buyer who is after a known clone-only cut repeated as closely as possible is better off 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 new; for everyone else the back shelf is best left alone.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches each order in plain packaging with the original packs intact inside and no on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, as seed importation is restricted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in many places buying seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under licence or both is. Checking the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and no part of this article should be read as legal advice.