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 beside it, and bought by a shrinking group of people who know exactly what they are looking for. It is easy to see 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, every new cross requires a male at some point in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists because someone kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines that trace to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is meant to be a population, not a single plant. This article sets out the argument for that half-male pack: what the male contributes, what a grower loses by not growing one, and how to work with a population rather than a clone.
The Other Half of the Genome
The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and to a flower grower that is all it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and that half is selected with the same care as the mother.
A male passes on structure, vigour, maturation speed, resistance to mould and pests, resin production and the terpene profile just as the female does; it just shows several of those traits less because it never grows a finished flower. Breeders who work with regular seed invest as much time choosing males as females, which is the work that a feminized cross inherits and cannot repeat. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it cannot give a second line of selected genes.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
Much of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Every generation of that selfing cuts in half the remaining genetic diversity, and after two generations what remains is close to one plant expressed in marginally different ways.
This is acceptable for a grower who needs that single plant. It is a loss for everyone who comes after. Recessive weaknesses surface: intersex tendencies, weak stems, susceptibility to a particular mould. Traits that existed in the original line but not in the chosen clone disappear out of the gene pool entirely. A generation of such breeding leaves a market full with versions of a dozen plants, and a anyone trying to create something different finds there is little remaining to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that refills the market, and it only persist as long as somebody keep growing it.
Reading a Male Plant
Articles on choosing females are easy to find; advice on choosing males is rare, because most growers never keep one long enough to look. For a grower producing seed, these are the signs breeders look for.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a clear scent indicates it holds the terpene genes worth passing on.
- Structure. Short internodes, a thick central stem and a frame that resembles the desired female habit are passed on; a stretched, weak-stemmed male passes that down too.
- Stability. A male that also shows female flowers under normal conditions is rejected outright; the trait is the last thing anyone wants breeding forward.
- Restraint. Plants that dump huge amounts of pollen early are often the less desirable in other respects; many breeders favour moderate producers.
- Timing. A male that shows sex early and flowers in step with the females is far more useful than an early one that sheds pollen before any female is receptive.
A Pack Is a Population
The mistake new regular-seed growers fall into is treating a pack as 10 attempts at the same plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the point 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 gives something like five females to compare and five males to cull or judge for breeding. Within the females, expect real differences: stature, flowering time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. 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 now owns something a feminized pack cannot offer: a line of chosen parents which are their own.
Three Ways to Cross
Holding selected parents is only worth something if making the next batch, and there the options multiply. The main approaches account for most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Open pollination. Allow each male pollinate each female. It preserves the whole range of the line, makes a generous volume of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are kept alive, and it is the right method when the aim is preservation rather than refinement.
- Backcross. Cross a selected seedling back to one of its original parents to lock in a specific trait. It tightens the genetics fast and is useful when one parent has something worth keeping and the second contributed mainly vigour.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or a few picked females, every other plant else removed. The seeds inherit the traits of two selected plants and express narrower spread than the parent pack. Repeated over several rounds with stable selection, this is how a new line is built.
All three need only a isolated space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and patience. None of them needs the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making does.
Keeping Old Lines Alive
Some lines were never feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from places where cannabis was grown over centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the first decades of modern breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the breeders maintaining them regard the population as the whole value, and reversing 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. Expect wide variation, long flowering periods in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and traits that made sense in a mountain valley but not under a tent. There will be also aromas and effects that do not exist in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its origin of collection and the generation it has been reproduced from the first collection.
When the Library Is the Wrong Shop
None of the above makes regular seed the best option for everyone, and pretending otherwise does the category no service.
A grower with space for three plants who wants each one of them to flower is better off with feminized seed. The same is a grower unable to inspect the plants every day during the onset of flower, because a late male in a confined space ruins the whole crop inside days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a population they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a specific clone-only cut reproduced exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to choose, to keep and eventually to make something new; for everyone else the back shelf is safely left alone.
Ordering and the Law
Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in plain parcels with the original packs sealed inside and nothing on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed importation is restricted there. Seed law differs widely by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others the two are allowed under licence or both is. Checking the rules where you live is the buyer’s responsibility, and no part of this article is legal advice.