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 beside it, and bought by a dwindling number of people who know exactly what they are after. It is easy to read that as obsolescence. It is closer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the paperback rack next door grows. Every female-only line began as a regular one, each new cross needs a male at some point in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists because someone 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 half-male pack: what the male contributes, what a grower gives up by not seeing one, and how to get value with a population rather than a clone.
Not Just Pollen
The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and to a flower grower that is the whole of it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and that half is selected with the same attention as the female.
A male passes on structure, hybrid vigour, flowering speed, tolerance to mould and pests, resin density and the aromatic profile exactly as the female does; it just expresses some of those traits less visibly because it does not grows a finished flower. Breeders who breed with regular seed spend as much time choosing males as females, which is the work that a feminized line inherits and cannot replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a second line of selected traits.
How Diversity Leaks Away
Much of the feminized catalogue is built from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Each generation of that selfing halves the surviving genetic variation, and after two rounds what is left is essentially one plant expressed in marginally different ways.
This is acceptable for a consumer who wants that single plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Hidden weaknesses surface: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Traits that were present in the parent line but not in the selected clone disappear out of the population altogether. A decade of this produces a market full with versions of the same few clones, and a anyone trying to create something different discovers there is nothing remaining to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that refills the pool, and it only exists as long as people grows it.
How to Judge a Male
Articles on selecting females are everywhere; guidance on choosing males is scarce, since most people do not keep one long enough to judge. For anyone making seed, these are the marks breeders watch for.
- Timing. A male that declares sex first and flowers in step with the females is more workable than an early one that releases pollen before the female is receptive.
- Stability. A male that at the same time shows female pistils under normal stress is rejected outright; that trait is the one thing worth carrying into a line.
- Restraint. Males that dump huge quantities of pollen all at once are often the least desirable in other respects; many breeders prefer moderate producers.
- Structure. Short internodes, a strong central stem and branching that resembles the desired female habit are inherited; a stretched, floppy male passes that down too.
Thinking in Numbers
The mistake new regular-seed growers make 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 point 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 around five females to evaluate and five males to cull or assess for breeding. Within the females, expect real differences: height, finishing time, smell, density, tolerance. 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 has something a feminized pack can never offer: a pair of selected parents which are their own.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning chosen parents is only worth something if producing the next batch, and there the options open up. The main approaches cover most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Backcross. Take a chosen offspring again to one of its original parents to lock in a particular trait. It narrows the genetics fast and is useful when one plant has something worth concentrating and the second brought mostly vigour.
- Open pollination. Allow each male pollinate each female. It keeps the full range of the line, produces a generous volume of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how traditional lines are kept alive, and it is the right method when the aim is preservation rather than refinement.
- Selected cross. One chosen male to one or several picked females, every other plant else culled. The seeds carry the traits of the two selected plants and show less variation than the original pack. Done over generations with consistent selection, this is how a new line is made.
Each of these need only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. None of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized production requires.
Landraces and Heirloom Lines
Some lines have never feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from places where cannabis was grown for centuries, and old crosses from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the people maintaining them treat diversity as the whole point, 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. Expect large variation, long flowering times in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and traits that made sense in a field but not under a tent. There will be also aromas and chemistry that do not appear in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its origin of origin and the generation it has been grown out from the first collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
None of the above turns regular seed into the best choice for everyone, and pretending that it is would the category no favours.
A grower with space for three plants who wants every one of them to flower is better off with feminized seed. So is a grower who cannot afford to inspect the plants every day during the start of flower, since a late male in a small space seeds the whole crop inside days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a population they cannot select from. And anyone who is after a known 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 eventually to make something of their own; for anyone else the regular shelf is safely left where it is.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in unmarked parcels with the breeder’s packs intact inside and nothing on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, as seed import is not permitted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is lawful as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed under licence or neither is. Knowing the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and no part of this article is legal advice.