Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: smaller every year, marked cheaper than the feminized packs beside it, and picked up by a dwindling group of people who know exactly what they are looking for. It is tempting to see that as the end of a technology. It is nearer to the truth to read it as a library losing shelves while the paperback rack next door expands. Every feminized line began as a regular one, each new cross requires a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all survives only because somebody held onto regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines that trace to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article makes the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a buyer gives up by not growing one, and how to work with a population instead of a clone.
Not Just Pollen
The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and for a flower grower that is the whole of it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and half is chosen with the same attention as the mother.
A male passes on structure, vigour, flowering speed, resistance to mould and pests, resin density and the aromatic profile just as the female does; it simply shows some of those qualities less visibly since it does not grows a smokable flower. Those who breed with regular seed spend as much time choosing males as females, which is the effort that a feminized line borrows and cannot repeat. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it does not provide a second line of selected genes.
The Narrowing
Much of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, treated and crossed with itself. Every round of that process halves the surviving genetic variation, and after two rounds what remains is close to one plant expressed across marginally different ways.
That is acceptable for a grower who needs that single plant. It is a loss for everyone who comes after. Recessive weaknesses emerge: intersex tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that existed in the parent line but not in the chosen clone vanish from the population altogether. A generation of this produces a market crowded with versions of a dozen clones, and a breeder wanting to create something new finds there is nothing left to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the pool, and it can only exists as long as somebody keep growing it.
Reading a Male Plant
Articles on selecting females are everywhere; guidance on picking males is rare, because most growers never keep one past the first week of flower to look. For a grower producing seed, these are the signs breeders look for.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a pollen cluster and smell it. A male with trichomes on its sepals and a strong scent suggests it carries the terpene genes worth passing on.
- Structure. Short internodes, a thick main stem and a frame that matches the desired female shape are passed on; a lanky, weak-stemmed male hands that down too.
- Timing. A male that declares sex early and matures at the same pace as the females is far more workable than an early one that releases pollen before the female is ready.
- Stability. Any male that also forms female flowers under ordinary conditions is discarded without exception; that trait is the one thing worth breeding into a line.
- Restraint. Plants that release enormous amounts of pollen all at once are frequently the less selected in other respects; many breeders prefer steady shedders.
A Pack Is a Population
A mistake new regular-seed buyers make is treating a pack as 10 chances at the one 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 observe the spread and select from it.
Roughly half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds gives something like five females to evaluate and five males to cull or judge for breeding. Among the females, expect noticeable differences: height, finishing 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 can never offer: a pair of chosen parents which are their own.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning selected parents means producing the next generation, and there the choices multiply. The main approaches account for most of what home breeders do.
- Selected cross. One picked male on one or several picked females, every other plant else removed. The offspring inherit the traits of two specific plants and show less variation than the original pack. Done over generations with stable choices, this is how a stable line is built.
- Open pollination. Let each male reach each female. It keeps the full diversity of the line, produces a generous quantity of seed, and involves no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are kept alive, and it is the correct method when the aim is preservation not refinement.
- Backcross. Take a selected offspring again to one of its parents to lock in a specific trait. It tightens the genetics quickly and is useful when one parent shows something worth keeping and the other brought mainly vigour.
All three require nothing more than a separate space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and a few weeks. None of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making requires.
Keeping Old Lines Alive
A number of lines were never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from places where cannabis grew over centuries, and old crosses from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the breeders maintaining them regard the population as the entire point, and selfing a single plant would destroy exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of preserving.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a modern hybrid. There will be wide variation, extended flowering periods in tropical lines, lanky plants, and traits that make sense in a field but not in a small room. There will be also flavours and chemistry that do not exist in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its origin of collection and the generation it has been reproduced from the first collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
None of the above makes regular seed into the best option for everyone, and claiming otherwise does 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 inspect the plants every day during the start of flower, because a late male in a confined space seeds the whole crop inside days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no use from a population they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a specific famous 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 select, to keep and at some point to produce something of their own; for anyone else the regular shelf is safely left alone.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in unmarked parcels with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and no on the exterior to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed import is not permitted there. Seed law differs widely by country: in many places owning seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed under licence or neither is. Checking the rules where you live is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article is legal advice.