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 picked up by a shrinking number of people who understand exactly what they are after. It is easy to see that as obsolescence. It is nearer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the paperback rack next door grows. Every female-only line started as a regular one, every new cross requires a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all survives only because somebody held onto regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines going back to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article makes the case for that half-male pack: what the male contributes, what a buyer loses by not seeing one, and how to work with a pack instead of a clone.
The Other Half of the Genome
The easy description 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 that half is chosen with the same attention as the female.
A male contributes growth habit, vigour, flowering time, tolerance to mould and pests, trichome density and the aromatic chemistry just as the female does; it simply expresses some of those traits less visibly since it never produce a smokable flower. Those who work with regular seed invest as much time selecting males as females, and this is the effort that a feminized cross inherits and can never repeat. Reversing a female gives pollen; it does not provide a second line of selected traits.
How Diversity Leaks Away
Much of the feminized market is built from S1 seeds: a single famous clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Each round of that process halves the surviving genetic diversity, and after two generations what remains is essentially one plant expressed across slightly different forms.
This is acceptable for a grower who needs that single plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Recessive faults surface: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that existed in the parent line but not in the chosen clone vanish out of the population entirely. A decade of such breeding produces a market crowded with variations of the same few clones, and a anyone trying to make something different discovers there is nothing remaining to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the pool, and it only exists if somebody keep growing it.
How to Judge a Male
Guides on choosing females are everywhere; advice on picking males is scarce, because most growers do not keep one long enough to judge. For anyone producing seed, the following are the marks breeders look for.
- Timing. A male that shows sex first and matures at the same pace as the females is more useful than an early one that sheds pollen before any female is receptive.
- Stability. Any male that at the same time forms female pistils under normal stress is discarded outright; that trait is the one thing anyone wants carrying into a line.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with trichomes on its sepals and a strong aroma indicates it carries the terpene genes that are worth passing on.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a thick main stem and a frame that matches the intended female shape are inherited; a stretched, weak-stemmed male hands that on too.
- Restraint. Males that dump huge amounts of pollen all at once are frequently the less desirable in other respects; breeders favour steady shedders.
Thinking in Numbers
The error new regular-seed buyers make is treating a pack as 10 chances at the same plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the value of growing it is to observe the range and select from it.
Roughly half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to evaluate and five males to discard or assess for breeding. Among the females, expect real variation: height, finishing time, smell, density, tolerance. This variation is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who takes cuttings from the best female and male has something a feminized pack can never offer: a pair of selected parents which are their own.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning selected parents means producing the next generation, and there the choices open up. The main methods account for most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Open pollination. Allow each male reach each female. It preserves the whole diversity of the line, produces a generous volume of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are kept alive, and it is the correct method when the aim is preservation rather than refinement.
- Backcross. Cross a selected seedling back to one of its parents to fix a particular trait. It narrows the range quickly and is used when a single parent has something worth concentrating and the second brought mainly vigour.
- Selected cross. One chosen male to one or several picked females, everything else removed. The seeds carry the qualities of two selected plants and express narrower variation than the original pack. Done over several rounds with stable selection, this is how a stable line is built.
All three need nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a soft brush or a small bag, and patience. Not one of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making does.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
A number of lines were never feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis was grown over centuries, and old hybrids from the first decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed because the people maintaining them regard the population as the entire value, and selfing a single plant would erase precisely what makes the line worth keeping.
Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a commercial hybrid. Expect large variation, long flowering periods in tropical lines, lanky plants, and traits that made sense in a mountain valley but not under a small room. Expect too aromas and effects 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 collection and the generation it has been grown out from the original collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
Nothing of the above makes regular seed the right choice for everyone, and claiming otherwise would the product no service.
A grower with room for three plants who needs every one of them to finish is better served with feminized seed. So is a grower unable to inspect the plants each day around the onset of flower, since a missed male in a small space ruins everything within days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a pack they cannot select from. And a buyer who is after a specific clone-only cut reproduced as closely as possible is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to select, to hold onto and eventually to make something of their own; for everyone else the regular shelf is safely left alone.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in unmarked parcels with the original packs intact inside and nothing on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, as seed import is restricted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in many places buying seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others the two are allowed under licence or neither is. Knowing the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.