Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs beside it, and picked up by a shrinking group of people who understand exactly what they are looking for. It is tempting to read that as obsolescence. It is closer to the truth to read it as a library losing shelves while the bookshop next door grows. Every feminized line began as a regular one, each new cross requires a male at some point in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that exists at all survives only because somebody held onto regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines going back to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is meant to be a population, not a single plant. This article makes the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a grower loses by not growing one, and how to work with a population rather than a clone.
Not Just Pollen
The easy description 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 selected with the same care as the mother.
A male contributes structure, hybrid vigour, maturation time, tolerance to mould and pests, resin density and the aromatic chemistry just as the female does; it just expresses several of those qualities less because it does not grows a finished flower. Breeders who work with regular seed invest at least as much time choosing males as females, which is the effort that a feminized line inherits and can never replicate. Reversing a female gives pollen; it does not give a different set of selected genes.
The Narrowing
A great deal of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, treated and crossed with itself. Each generation of that selfing halves the remaining genetic variation, and after a couple of generations what remains is close to one plant expressed across slightly different forms.
That is acceptable for a consumer who needs that single plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Hidden faults emerge: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, susceptibility to a particular mould. Qualities that were present in the parent line but absent in the selected clone vanish from the gene pool entirely. A decade of such breeding produces a market crowded with variations of the same few plants, and a anyone trying to create something different discovers there is little remaining to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the pool, and that reservoir can only persist as long as somebody grows it.
How to Judge a Male
Guides on selecting females are everywhere; advice on choosing males is scarce, since most people do not keep one long enough to look. For anyone making seed, these are the marks breeders look for.
- Structure. Short internodes, a thick central stem and a frame that matches the desired female shape are passed on; a stretched, floppy male hands that down too.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a pollen sac and smell it. A male with resin on its sepals and a clear aroma indicates it carries the terpene genes that are worth keeping.
- Stability. Any male that at the same time forms female pistils under ordinary conditions is rejected outright; the tendency is the one thing anyone wants carrying into a line.
- Restraint. Plants that dump enormous quantities of pollen all at once are frequently the least selected in other respects; many breeders prefer steady shedders.
What 10 Seeds Actually Give You
The mistake first-time regular-seed growers fall into is treating a pack as 10 chances at the same plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the value of running it is to see the spread and select from it.
About half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to compare and five males to either discard or assess for breeding. Within the females, look for real differences: height, finishing time, aroma, bud structure, resistance. That variation is not a failure 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 line of chosen parents which are theirs.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning selected parents is only worth something if producing the next generation, and there the choices multiply. The main approaches account for most of what home breeders do.
- Selected cross. One chosen male to one or several chosen females, everything else removed. The seeds inherit the qualities of two specific plants and show narrower spread than the parent pack. Done over several rounds with consistent choices, this is how a new line is made.
- Backcross. Take a selected offspring back to one of its parents to fix a specific trait. It narrows the genetics quickly and is used when a single plant has something worth keeping and the second contributed mostly vigour.
- Open pollination. Allow each male pollinate every female. It keeps the full range of the line, makes a generous volume of seed, and involves no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained alive, and it is the correct method when the aim is preservation rather than improvement.
All three need only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and patience. None of them needs the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making does.
Keeping Old Lines Alive
A number of lines were never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces gathered from places where cannabis was grown for centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the early decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed since the breeders maintaining them regard the population as the entire value, and selfing a single plant would destroy exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a modern hybrid. Expect wide variation, extended flowering periods in tropical lines, lanky plants, and traits that make sense in a mountain valley but not under a tent. Expect too aromas and effects that no longer appear in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its region of collection and the number of generations it has been grown out from the original collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
None of the above makes regular seed into the right option for everyone, and claiming that it is would the product no favours.
A grower with room for three plants who needs each one of them to flower is far better off with feminized seed. So is a grower unable to inspect the plants each day during the onset of flower, since a missed male in a confined space ruins the whole crop within days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a population they cannot select from. And a buyer who wants a known famous plant repeated as closely as possible is looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to select, to keep and eventually to produce something new; for everyone else the regular shelf is safely ignored where it is.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in plain parcels with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and no on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, 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 neither is. Checking the position where you live is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.