Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: smaller every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a dwindling number of people who know exactly what they are after. It is easy to see that as the end of a technology. It is nearer to the truth to see it as a library losing shelves while the bookshop next door expands. Every female-only line started as a regular one, each new cross needs a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists only because somebody kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers 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 single plant. This article makes the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a buyer loses by not seeing one, and how to get value with a pack instead of a clone.
The Other Half of the Genome
The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and for a flower grower that is all it. To 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 structure, vigour, maturation time, resistance to mould and pests, trichome production and the terpene chemistry just as the female does; it just expresses several of those qualities less visibly since it never grows a finished flower. Breeders who breed with regular seed invest as much time choosing males as females, which is the work that a feminized line inherits and can never replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it does not give a second line of selected traits.
How Diversity Leaks Away
A great deal of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Every generation of that selfing halves the surviving genetic diversity, and after two generations 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 surface: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Traits that were present in the parent line but absent in the selected clone disappear out of the gene pool entirely. A decade of this produces a market crowded with variations of the same few plants, and a breeder wanting to create something different discovers there is nothing remaining to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the market, and it only persist if somebody grows it.
How to Judge a Male
Articles on choosing females are easy to find; advice on choosing males is rare, because most growers do not keep one past the first week of flower to judge. For a grower making seed, the following are the signs breeders watch for.
- Timing. A male that shows sex early and matures in step with the females is more useful than a very early one that sheds pollen before any female is receptive.
- Restraint. Males that dump huge amounts of pollen early are frequently also the less desirable genetically; many breeders favour steady shedders.
- Stability. A male that at the same time shows female pistils under normal conditions is rejected outright; the tendency is the last thing worth carrying into a line.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a strong central stem and branching that matches the desired female habit are inherited; a lanky, weak-stemmed male hands that down too.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a pollen cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a clear aroma suggests it carries the resin traits that are worth passing on.
A Pack Is a Population
The error first-time regular-seed buyers fall into is seeing a pack as 10 attempts 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 growing it is to see the spread and select from it.
About half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to evaluate and five males to cull or assess for breeding. Among 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 selling. The grower who keeps the best female and the best male has something a feminized pack cannot supply: a pair of chosen parents which are theirs.
From One Pack to the Next
Holding chosen parents is only worth something if producing the next batch, and here the choices open up. Three approaches account for most of what home breeders attempt.
- Open pollination. Let each male reach each female. It keeps the full range of the line, produces a generous volume of seed, and does no selection at all. This is how traditional lines are kept alive, and it is the right method when the aim is preservation not improvement.
- Backcross. Take a selected offspring again to one of its parents to fix a specific trait. It tightens the range fast and is used when one parent has something worth keeping and the other brought mostly vigour.
- Selected cross. One picked male on one or a few picked females, everything else culled. The seeds inherit the qualities of the two selected plants and express narrower variation than the parent pack. Repeated over generations with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is made.
All three require only a separate space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and patience. None of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making does.
Keeping Old Lines Alive
A number of lines have never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis grew over centuries, and old crosses from the early decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed since the people keeping them treat the population as the whole value, and selfing a single plant would destroy exactly what makes the line worth preserving.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from growing a commercial hybrid. There will be large variation, extended flowering times in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and traits that made sense in a field but not under a tent. There will be too aromas and chemistry that no longer exist in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its region of origin and the number of generations it has been grown out from the first collection.
The Honest Exclusions
Nothing of the above makes regular seed into the right option for everyone, and pretending otherwise would the product no favours.
A grower with room for a handful of plants who needs each one of them to flower is far better served with feminized seed. The same is a grower who cannot afford to check the plants each day around the start of flower, because a late male in a confined space ruins everything within days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a pack they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a specific clone-only plant repeated as closely as possible 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 at some point to produce something new; for everyone else the regular shelf is best left alone.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches each order in plain packaging with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and no on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, because seed importation is not permitted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in many places owning seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed under licence or both is. Checking the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and no part of this article is legal advice.
