Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced lower 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 see that as obsolescence. It is closer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the paperback rack next door expands. Every female-only line started as a regular one, each new cross needs a male at some point in its pedigree, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists because someone kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines that trace to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article makes the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a grower gives up by not seeing one, and how to get value with a population instead of a copy.
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 the whole of it. For 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 passes on growth habit, hybrid vigour, maturation time, resistance to mould and pests, trichome production and the terpene chemistry just as the female does; it simply expresses some of those traits less visibly since it does not grows a smokable flower. Breeders who breed with regular seed invest as much time selecting males as females, which is the effort that a feminized line inherits and cannot replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a second line of selected genes.
The Narrowing
Much of the feminized market is built from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Every generation of that selfing halves the remaining genetic variation, and after two rounds what is left is close to one plant expressed in marginally different ways.
That is fine for a grower who needs that single plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Hidden faults surface: hermaphrodite tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the original line but absent in the chosen clone vanish out of the gene pool altogether. A generation of this produces a market crowded with variations of a dozen clones, and a anyone wanting to create something new discovers there is nothing remaining to work with. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that refills the market, and that reservoir only exists as long as somebody keep growing it.
How to Judge a Male
Guides on choosing females are everywhere; guidance on choosing males is scarce, because most people do not keep one past the first week of flower to look. For a grower making seed, these are the marks breeders look for.
- Timing. A male that shows sex early and flowers in step with the females is far more workable than a very early one that sheds pollen before any female is ready.
- Stability. Any male that at the same time forms female pistils under ordinary conditions is rejected outright; the tendency is the last thing worth carrying forward.
- Restraint. Plants that release enormous quantities of pollen all at once are often the least selected in other respects; many breeders prefer moderate producers.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a thick main stem and branching that resembles the intended female habit are passed on; a lanky, floppy male passes that on too.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a pollen sac and smell it. A male with resin on its sepals and a strong aroma indicates it holds the terpene genes worth passing on.
A Pack Is a Population
A mistake new regular-seed growers fall into is seeing a pack as 10 attempts at the same plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the value of growing it is to see the range and choose from it.
About half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to evaluate and five males to either discard or judge for breeding. Among the females, expect noticeable differences: height, finishing time, aroma, bud structure, resistance. That variation is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who keeps the strongest female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack cannot offer: a pair of selected parents which are theirs.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning selected parents means making the next generation, and there the options multiply. The main approaches cover most of what home breeders attempt.
- Open pollination. Let every male pollinate each female. It keeps the whole diversity of the line, produces a generous volume of seed, and does no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained going, and it is the correct method when the goal is preservation rather than improvement.
- Selected cross. One chosen male to one or a few chosen females, every other plant else removed. The offspring carry the traits of two specific plants and express less spread than the original pack. Repeated over generations with stable selection, this is how a new line is made.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen seedling again to one of its parents to lock in a particular trait. It tightens the genetics fast and is useful when a single plant shows something worth keeping and the second contributed mostly vigour.
Each of these need nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and patience. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized production does.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
Some 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 indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the people keeping them regard diversity as the entire point, and selfing a single clone would erase precisely what makes the line worth preserving.
Running a landrace from regular seed is different from running a commercial hybrid. There will be wide variation, long flowering periods in tropical lines, tall plants, and qualities that made sense in a field but not in a tent. There will be also flavours and effects that do not appear in the commercial market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line marked with its region of origin and the number of generations it has been grown out since the first collection.
When the Library Is the Wrong Shop
None of the above makes regular seed the right option for everyone, and pretending otherwise would the category no favours.
A grower with room for a handful of plants who needs every one of them to finish is better off with feminized seed. The same is a grower who cannot afford to check the plants each day during the start of flower, because a late male in a confined space ruins the whole crop within days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a population they cannot select from. And anyone who wants a specific clone-only plant reproduced as closely as possible is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to keep and eventually to make something of their own; for everyone else the regular shelf is safely left alone.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in plain packaging with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and no on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed importation is not permitted there. Seed law differs widely by country: in a good number of places buying seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under local rules or neither is. Knowing the position where you live is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.
