Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked lower than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a dwindling group of people who understand exactly what they are after. It is easy to read that as obsolescence. It is nearer to the truth to read it as a library losing shelves while the bookshop next door grows. Every feminized line started as a regular one, every new cross needs a male at some point in its pedigree, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists only because someone kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines going back to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article makes the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a buyer loses by never growing one, and how to get value with a pack rather than a clone.
Not Just Pollen
The easy account of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and for a flower grower that is all it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and half is chosen with the same attention as the mother.
A male passes on growth habit, vigour, flowering time, tolerance to mould and pests, resin density and the terpene chemistry just as the female does; it just shows some of those traits less since it never produce a finished flower. Those who work with regular seed invest at least as much time selecting males as females, which is the work that a feminized line borrows and can never repeat. Reversing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a different set of selected genes.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
Much of the feminized catalogue is built from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Every generation of that process cuts in half the remaining genetic variation, and after a couple of rounds what remains is close to one plant repeated across slightly different ways.
That is acceptable for a consumer who wants that single plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Hidden weaknesses surface: intersex tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Qualities that existed in the parent line but not in the selected clone disappear out of the population entirely. A generation of this produces a market crowded with versions of the same few plants, and a breeder trying to make something new finds there is nothing left to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the pool, and that reservoir only persist if somebody keep growing it.
How to Judge a Male
Guides on choosing females are everywhere; guidance on choosing males is scarce, because most growers do not keep one long enough to look. For a grower producing seed, the following are the signs breeders watch for.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a thick main stem and a frame that matches the intended female habit are passed on; a lanky, weak-stemmed male passes that on too.
- Stability. A male that also shows female flowers under ordinary conditions is discarded outright; that trait is the last thing anyone wants carrying into a line.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its sepals and a clear aroma suggests it carries the terpene traits that are worth keeping.
- Restraint. Males that dump huge amounts of pollen early are often the less selected in other respects; breeders favour moderate shedders.
Thinking in Numbers
A error new regular-seed buyers 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 range and choose from it.
Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to evaluate and five males to cull or judge for breeding. Within the females, expect noticeable variation: stature, finishing time, smell, bud structure, resistance. This spread is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who keeps the strongest female and male has something a feminized pack can never supply: a line of selected parents that are theirs.
Making Your Own Seed
Holding chosen parents is only worth something if producing the next batch, and here the options multiply. Three approaches cover most of what home breeders attempt.
- Backcross. Take a selected offspring back to one of its original parents to fix a particular trait. It narrows the genetics quickly and is used when one parent shows something worth concentrating and the second brought mostly vigour.
- Selected cross. One chosen male to one or several chosen females, everything else removed. The seeds carry the qualities of the two selected plants and express less variation than the parent pack. Done over generations with stable selection, this is how a stable line is made.
- Open pollination. Let each male reach each female. It keeps the full range of the line, makes a large volume of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are kept going, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation not improvement.
Each of these need only a isolated space for the male, a soft brush or a small bag, and patience. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized production requires.
Landraces and Heirloom Lines
Some lines were never feminized and likely never will be: landraces gathered from regions 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 entire value, and selfing a single plant would erase precisely what makes the line worth preserving.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from running a commercial hybrid. There will be large variation, long flowering times in tropical lines, tall plants, and traits that made sense in a mountain valley but not in a small room. There will be too flavours and chemistry that no longer exist in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line marked with its origin of origin and the generation it has been reproduced from the original collection.
When the Library Is the Wrong Shop
Nothing of the above makes regular seed the right option for everyone, and pretending otherwise does the product no service.
A grower with space for three plants who wants every one of them to finish is better off with feminized seed. So is anyone who cannot afford to check the plants each day during the onset of flower, since a missed male in a confined space ruins everything within 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 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 intends to select, to hold onto and eventually to make something of their own; for anyone else the back shelf is best left where it is.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches each order in plain packaging with the original packs sealed inside and no on the exterior 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 many places buying seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under local rules or neither is. Checking the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and no part of this article is legal advice.