Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: smaller every year, priced lower than the feminized packs next to it, and picked up by a dwindling 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 bookshop 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 breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists because somebody held onto regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines that trace to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a grower loses by never seeing one, and how to work with a pack instead of a copy.
The Other Half of the Genome
The lazy account 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 attention as the female.
A male contributes structure, vigour, maturation time, tolerance to mould and pests, trichome production and the aromatic chemistry exactly as the female does; it just expresses several of those qualities less because it never produce a smokable flower. Those 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 can never replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a different line of selected genes.
How Diversity Leaks Away
Much of the feminized catalogue is built from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, treated and crossed with itself. Each round of that selfing cuts in half the surviving genetic diversity, and after two rounds what remains is essentially one plant expressed in marginally different ways.
This is acceptable for a grower who needs that one plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Hidden weaknesses emerge: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Qualities that were present in the parent line but not in the selected clone vanish from the population altogether. A decade of this leaves a market crowded with versions of the same few plants, and a breeder trying to make something new discovers there is little left to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the market, and it only persist if people grows it.
How to Judge a Male
Articles on choosing females are everywhere; advice on choosing males is scarce, since most people do not keep one past the first week of flower to judge. For anyone producing seed, these are the signs breeders look for.
- Timing. A male that declares sex early and flowers at the same pace as the females is far more useful than an early one that releases pollen before any female is ready.
- Restraint. Males that release enormous quantities of pollen early are often the less selected in other respects; many breeders prefer steady shedders.
- Structure. Short internodes, a thick central stem and branching that resembles the desired female shape are inherited; a stretched, floppy male passes that down too.
- Stability. A male that also forms female flowers under ordinary conditions is discarded without exception; the tendency is the last thing worth carrying into a line.
What 10 Seeds Actually Give You
The error first-time regular-seed growers fall into is seeing a pack as 10 chances at the same plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the value of running it is to observe the spread and choose from it.
Roughly half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds gives around five females to compare and five males to discard or assess for breeding. Within the females, expect noticeable variation: stature, finishing time, aroma, density, resistance. 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 cannot offer: a pair of selected parents which are theirs.
From One Pack to the Next
Holding chosen parents is only worth something if making the next generation, and here the options open up. The main approaches account for most of what home breeders attempt.
- Open pollination. Let every male pollinate every female. It preserves the full range of the line, makes a generous quantity of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how traditional lines are maintained going, and it is the right approach when the goal is preservation rather than improvement.
- Selected cross. One chosen male to one or a few chosen females, everything else removed. The seeds carry the traits of the two selected plants and express less spread than the original pack. Repeated over generations with consistent selection, this is how a stable line is made.
- Backcross. Take a selected offspring again to one of its original parents to fix a specific trait. It narrows the range fast and is useful when a single parent has something worth concentrating and the other contributed mainly vigour.
All three require nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and patience. Not one of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized production does.
Landraces and Heirloom Lines
Some lines were never feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis grew over centuries, and old crosses from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the people keeping them regard the population as the whole value, and selfing a single plant would destroy precisely what makes the line worth keeping.
Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from growing a modern hybrid. Expect wide variation, extended flowering periods in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and traits that made sense in a field but not in a small room. Expect too aromas and chemistry that no longer appear in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line marked 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 makes regular seed the right option for everyone, and pretending otherwise does the product no service.
A grower with room for a handful of plants who needs every one of them to finish is far better served with feminized seed. The same is anyone unable to check the plants every day around the onset of flower, since a late 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 select from. And anyone who is after a specific clone-only cut 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 hold onto and at some point to make something new; for anyone else the regular shelf is safely left alone.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in unmarked parcels with the original packs intact inside and no on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed importation is not permitted there. Seed law differs sharply by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others the two are allowed under licence or both is. Knowing the position where you live is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article is legal advice.
