Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: smaller every year, marked lower than the feminized packs next to it, and picked up by a shrinking number of people who understand exactly what they are looking for. 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 grows. Every feminized line began as a regular one, every new cross requires a male at some point in its pedigree, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that survives at all survives only because somebody kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines going back to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is meant to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a grower loses by not seeing one, and how to work with a population rather than a copy.
The Other Half of the Genome
The easy account 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 which follows, and half is chosen with the same attention as the mother.
A male passes on growth habit, hybrid vigour, flowering time, tolerance to mould and pests, resin production and the terpene profile exactly as the female does; it simply expresses some of those qualities less visibly since 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 cannot replicate. Reversing a female yields pollen; it cannot provide a second line of selected genes.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
Much of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Every round of that process halves the surviving genetic variation, and after two generations what remains is essentially one plant expressed across slightly different ways.
That is acceptable for a consumer who wants that single plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Recessive faults emerge: intersex tendencies, weak stems, susceptibility to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the original line but absent in the chosen clone disappear out of the gene pool entirely. A decade of this leaves a market crowded with variations of a dozen plants, and a anyone trying to create something new discovers there is little remaining to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the market, and it only exists as long as somebody grows it.
Reading a Male Plant
Guides on choosing females are easy to find; advice on choosing males is scarce, because most growers do not keep one long enough to look. For a grower making seed, the following are the marks breeders watch for.
- Restraint. Plants that release enormous amounts of pollen all at once are frequently also the least selected genetically; many breeders favour moderate shedders.
- Timing. A male that declares sex first and flowers at the same pace as the females is far more workable than an early one that releases pollen before any female is receptive.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a strong aroma suggests it holds the resin genes worth passing on.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a thick central stem and a frame that matches the intended female habit are passed on; a stretched, weak-stemmed male passes that on too.
- Stability. A male that at the same time forms female pistils under ordinary stress is rejected outright; that tendency is the one thing anyone wants carrying into a line.
Thinking in Numbers
A error new regular-seed growers fall into is treating a pack as 10 chances at the one plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the value of running it is to see the spread and choose from it.
About half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to evaluate and five males to either discard or judge for breeding. Within the females, expect noticeable variation: height, flowering time, aroma, density, 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 the best male has something a feminized pack cannot offer: a pair of chosen parents which are their own.
From One Pack to the Next
Holding chosen parents means making the next batch, and there the options multiply. The main methods account for most of what home breeders attempt.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or several picked females, every other plant else culled. The seeds carry the qualities of the two selected plants and express narrower variation than the original pack. Done over several rounds with consistent selection, this is how a stable line is built.
- Open pollination. Let each male reach each female. It preserves the whole range of the line, makes a large volume 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 improvement.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen offspring back to one of its parents to fix a particular quality. It narrows the genetics quickly and is used when a single parent shows something worth concentrating and the second contributed mainly vigour.
Each of these require nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a soft brush or a small bag, and a few weeks. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized production does.
Landraces and Heirloom Lines
A number of lines have never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis was grown for centuries, and old hybrids from the first decades of modern breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the people keeping them treat diversity as the entire point, and selfing a single plant would erase precisely what makes the line worth keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a commercial hybrid. There will be large variation, extended flowering periods in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and traits that made sense in a field but not in a small room. There will be too flavours and chemistry that no longer appear in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line marked with its origin of origin and the number of generations it has been grown out since the original collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
Nothing of the above turns regular seed into the right option for everyone, and pretending otherwise does the product no favours.
A grower with room for a handful of plants who wants every one of them to finish is far better off with feminized seed. The same is anyone unable to inspect the plants each day around the onset of flower, since a missed male in a confined space ruins the whole crop within days. Someone running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a pack they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a known famous plant reproduced exactly 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 of their own; for everyone else the regular shelf is best ignored alone.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in unmarked parcels with the breeder’s packs intact inside and nothing on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed import is restricted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in many places owning seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others the two are allowed under licence or both is. Checking the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and no part of this article is legal advice.
