Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked lower than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a shrinking number of people who know exactly what they are looking for. It is tempting to read that as the end of a technology. It is nearer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the bookshop next door grows. Every feminized line began as a regular one, each new cross requires 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 meant to be a population, not a single plant. This article sets out the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a grower gives up by not seeing one, and how to work 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 all it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and half is chosen with the same attention as the female.
A male contributes structure, vigour, flowering time, tolerance to mould and pests, resin production and the terpene profile exactly as the female does; it simply shows several of those traits less because it never produce a smokable flower. Breeders who breed with regular seed invest as much time choosing males as females, which is the effort that a feminized cross inherits and cannot replicate. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it cannot give a second line of selected traits.
The Narrowing
A great deal of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Every generation of that process cuts in half the remaining genetic diversity, and after two generations what is left is close to one plant expressed across slightly different forms.
That is acceptable for a consumer who wants that one plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Recessive weaknesses emerge: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Qualities that were present in the original line but not in the selected clone vanish from the gene pool entirely. A decade of such breeding produces a market crowded with variations of the same few plants, and a breeder wanting to create something new discovers there is little left to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the market, and that reservoir only exists if somebody keep growing it.
How to Judge a Male
Guides on choosing females are everywhere; guidance on choosing males is rare, since most growers never keep one long enough to look. For a grower producing seed, these are the marks breeders look for.
- Restraint. Males that release huge amounts of pollen all at once are often the less selected in other respects; many breeders favour steady producers.
- Structure. Short internodes, a thick central stem and a frame that matches the intended female habit are passed on; a lanky, floppy male passes that on too.
- Stability. A male that at the same time forms female pistils under ordinary conditions is rejected without exception; the trait is the one thing worth carrying into a line.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its sepals and a strong aroma indicates it holds the terpene traits that are worth passing on.
- Timing. A male that shows sex first and flowers at the same pace as the females is more useful than an early one that releases pollen before the female is ready.
A Pack Is a Population
The error first-time regular-seed buyers fall into is treating a pack as 10 chances at the one plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the point of running it is to see the range and select from it.
About half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives something like five females to compare and five males to discard or judge for breeding. Within the females, look for real differences: height, finishing time, smell, bud structure, tolerance. This variation is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who takes cuttings from the strongest female and male has something a feminized pack cannot offer: a pair of chosen parents that are theirs.
Making Your Own Seed
Holding selected parents means making the next batch, and there the options open up. The main methods account for most of what home breeders attempt.
- Selected cross. One picked male on one or several chosen females, every other plant else removed. The offspring carry the traits of two specific plants and express narrower variation than the parent pack. Repeated over several rounds with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is built.
- Open pollination. Allow each male reach each female. It preserves the whole range of the line, produces a large quantity of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how traditional lines are maintained going, and it is the correct method when the aim is preservation not improvement.
- Backcross. Cross a selected seedling again to one of its parents to lock in a specific quality. It narrows the range fast and is useful when one plant shows something worth keeping and the other brought mostly vigour.
All three 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
Some lines were never feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from places where cannabis grew over centuries, and heirloom 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 reversing a single clone would destroy exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a modern hybrid. There will be large variation, long flowering periods in tropical lines, lanky plants, and traits that made sense in a field but not in a small room. Expect also flavours and effects that no longer appear in the commercial market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its region of collection and the generation it has been grown out since the original collection.
The Honest Exclusions
None of the above makes regular seed into the right choice for everyone, and pretending otherwise does the product no service.
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 unable to check the plants each day during the onset of flower, since a late male in a small space ruins everything inside days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a pack they cannot choose from. And anyone who is after a known famous cut reproduced exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to select, to keep and eventually to make something new; for anyone else the regular shelf is safely ignored alone.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in unmarked parcels with the original packs intact inside and nothing on the exterior to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed importation is restricted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in many places owning seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under licence or both is. Checking the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.