Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a shrinking group of people who know exactly what they are after. It is tempting to see that as the end of a technology. It is nearer to the truth to read it as a library shrinking while the paperback rack next door grows. Every female-only line started as a regular one, every new cross needs a male at some point in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that exists 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 since a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article sets out the argument for that half-male pack: what the male is for, what a buyer loses by not growing one, and how to work with a pack rather than a clone.
The Other Half of the Genome
The easy description of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and to a flower grower that is the whole of it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and half is chosen with the same attention as the mother.
A male passes on structure, hybrid vigour, flowering time, tolerance to mould and pests, trichome production and the terpene chemistry exactly as the female does; it simply shows several of those qualities less because it does not produce a finished flower. Breeders who breed with regular seed invest at least as much time choosing males as females, which is the effort that a feminized cross borrows and can never repeat. Reversing a female yields pollen; it cannot provide a second line of selected genes.
The Narrowing
A great deal of the feminized catalogue is built from S1 seeds: a single famous clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Each generation of that selfing halves the surviving genetic diversity, and after two generations what remains is close to one plant repeated across marginally different ways.
This is acceptable for a grower who wants that single plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Hidden weaknesses surface: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Traits that were present in the original line but absent in the selected clone vanish from the gene pool entirely. A generation of such breeding leaves a market crowded with variations of the same few clones, and a anyone trying to make something different discovers there is little remaining to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the market, and that reservoir can only persist as long as people keep growing it.
Reading a Male Plant
Guides on choosing females are easy to find; advice on picking males is scarce, because most growers do not keep one long enough to judge. For a grower producing seed, the following are the signs breeders look for.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a pollen cluster and smell it. A male with trichomes on its flower parts and a strong scent indicates it carries the resin genes worth passing on.
- Restraint. Males that release enormous quantities of pollen early are often the least desirable in other respects; many breeders prefer moderate producers.
- Timing. A male that shows sex early and flowers at the same pace as the females is more useful than a very early one that sheds pollen before the female is receptive.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a strong main stem and branching that matches the desired female shape are passed on; a stretched, floppy male passes that down too.
- Stability. A male that at the same time forms female pistils under ordinary stress is rejected without exception; that tendency is the last thing worth breeding into a line.
What 10 Seeds Actually Give You
A error first-time regular-seed buyers make is seeing a pack as 10 attempts at the same plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the point of growing it is to see the range and select from it.
About half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to compare and five males to cull or judge for breeding. Among the females, look for noticeable differences: height, flowering time, smell, bud structure, tolerance. That spread is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who takes cuttings from the strongest female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack can never supply: a line of chosen parents that are their own.
From One Pack to the Next
Holding chosen parents is only worth something if making the next generation, and there the choices multiply. The main approaches cover most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Open pollination. Let each male reach each female. It keeps the full diversity of the line, produces a large quantity of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how traditional lines are maintained alive, and it is the correct approach when the goal is preservation rather than refinement.
- Backcross. Cross a selected offspring back to one of its original parents to lock in a particular quality. It tightens the genetics fast and is useful when a single parent has something worth concentrating and the second contributed mostly vigour.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or a few chosen females, every other plant else removed. The offspring carry the traits of two selected plants and express less spread than the parent pack. Repeated over several rounds with stable selection, this is how a stable line is made.
All three need only a isolated space for the male, a soft brush or a small bag, and a few weeks. Not one of them needs the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making requires.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
Some lines have never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis grew for centuries, and heirloom crosses from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed because the breeders keeping them regard the population as the whole point, and selfing a single clone would destroy exactly what makes the line worth keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from running a commercial hybrid. There will be wide variation, long flowering periods in tropical lines, tall plants, and traits that made sense in a mountain valley but not in a small room. Expect also flavours and effects that no longer appear in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, and each line marked with its region of origin and the number of generations it has been grown out from the original collection.
The Honest Exclusions
Nothing of the above turns regular seed into the best 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 far better off with feminized seed. So is anyone unable to check the plants every day around the onset of flower, because a missed male in a confined space seeds the whole crop inside days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no use from a pack they cannot select from. And a buyer who wants a known clone-only plant reproduced exactly is looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to keep and eventually to produce something new; for everyone else the regular shelf is safely left alone.
Ordering and the Law
Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in unmarked packaging with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and nothing on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed import is not permitted there. Seed law differs sharply by country: in a good number of places buying seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others the two are permitted under licence or neither is. Knowing the rules where you live is the buyer’s job, and no part of this article is legal advice.
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