Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a dwindling group of people who understand exactly what they are after. It is tempting to read that as the end of a technology. It is closer to the truth to read it as a library losing shelves while the paperback rack next door expands. Every female-only line started as a regular one, every new cross requires a male at some point in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists only because someone kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock 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 case for that half-male pack: what the male contributes, what a grower loses by not growing one, and how to work with a population instead of a clone.
The Other Half of the Genome
The easy description of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and to a flower grower that is the whole of it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and that half is selected with the same attention as the mother.
A male passes on growth habit, vigour, maturation speed, resistance to mould and pests, resin density and the aromatic chemistry exactly as the female does; it simply expresses several of those traits less because it never produce a smokable flower. Breeders who work with regular seed spend at least as much time choosing males as females, which is the effort that a feminized line borrows and can never replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it cannot give a second set of selected genes.
The Narrowing
A great deal of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Each round of that selfing cuts in half the surviving genetic diversity, and after two rounds what is left is close to one plant expressed in marginally different forms.
This is fine for a consumer who wants that one plant. It is a loss for everyone who comes after. Hidden faults surface: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the parent line but absent in the selected clone disappear out of the gene pool altogether. A decade of such breeding produces a market full with variations of the same few plants, and a anyone wanting to create something different finds there is nothing left to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the market, and that reservoir can only exists as long as somebody grows it.
How to Judge a Male
Guides on selecting females are easy to find; advice on picking males is scarce, since most people do not keep one long enough to judge. For a grower producing seed, these are the signs breeders look for.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a strong aroma indicates it carries the resin genes worth keeping.
- Stability. A male that at the same time shows female flowers under normal stress is discarded without exception; the trait is the last thing anyone wants breeding into a line.
- Restraint. Plants that release huge amounts of pollen all at once are frequently also the least desirable genetically; many breeders favour steady shedders.
- Timing. A male that declares sex early and matures in step with the females is more useful than an early one that sheds pollen before any female is receptive.
- Structure. Short internodes, a thick main stem and branching that resembles the desired female habit are inherited; a lanky, weak-stemmed male hands that on too.
What 10 Seeds Actually Give You
The 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 real outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the value of growing it is to see the range and select from it.
Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives something like five females to compare and five males to cull or assess for breeding. Among the females, expect noticeable variation: height, flowering time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. That variation is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who takes cuttings from the best female and male now owns something a feminized pack cannot offer: a pair of selected parents which are theirs.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning chosen parents means making the next batch, and there the choices multiply. The main methods cover most of what home breeders attempt.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen seedling back to one of its original parents to fix a particular trait. It tightens the genetics quickly and is useful when one parent shows something worth concentrating and the second contributed mostly vigour.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or a few chosen females, everything else removed. The seeds carry the qualities of the two specific plants and express less variation than the parent pack. Done over generations with consistent selection, this is how a new line is made.
- Open pollination. Let each male reach every female. It keeps the whole range of the line, produces a generous quantity of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained going, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation not refinement.
Each of these need nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a paintbrush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. None of them needs the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making requires.
Keeping Old Lines Alive
A number of lines have never feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis was grown over centuries, and heirloom crosses from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the breeders maintaining them treat the population as the whole point, and selfing a single clone would destroy precisely what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from running a modern hybrid. There will be wide variation, long flowering times in equatorial lines, tall plants, and qualities that make sense in a field but not under a tent. There will be also aromas and chemistry that do not appear in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, and each line marked with its origin of origin and the generation it has been reproduced since the original collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
Nothing of the above makes regular seed into the best choice for everyone, and pretending that it is would the product no favours.
A grower with room for three plants who needs each one of them to finish is far better served with feminized seed. So is a grower who cannot afford to check the plants every day around the start of flower, because a missed male in a small space seeds everything inside days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a pack they cannot choose from. And a buyer who wants a specific famous cut repeated exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to hold onto and at some point to make something of their own; for everyone else the regular shelf is best left where it is.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in unmarked parcels with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and no on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed importation is restricted there. Seed law differs widely by country: in many places buying seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others the two are permitted under local rules or both is. Checking the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.
