Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: smaller 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 the end of a technology. It is closer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the bookshop next door grows. Every female-only line began as a regular one, every new cross requires a male somewhere in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists because somebody kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines that trace to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out 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 population rather than a clone.
Not Just Pollen
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 selected with the same attention as the female.
A male contributes structure, hybrid vigour, flowering time, tolerance to mould and pests, trichome density and the terpene chemistry exactly as the female does; it just shows several of those qualities less since it never grows a smokable flower. Breeders who work with regular seed spend as much time selecting males as females, and this is the effort that a feminized cross borrows and cannot replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it does not provide a second set of selected genes.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
Much of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, treated and crossed with itself. Each generation of that selfing cuts in half the remaining genetic variation, and after a couple of generations what remains is essentially one plant expressed in slightly different ways.
This is acceptable for a grower who wants that single plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Hidden faults emerge: hermaphrodite tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that existed in the original line but not in the chosen clone disappear out of the gene pool altogether. A decade of such breeding leaves a market crowded with versions of the same few plants, and a breeder trying to make something different discovers there is little remaining to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that refills the market, and that reservoir only persist if somebody grows it.
How to Judge a Male
Guides on selecting females are everywhere; advice on choosing males is scarce, because most growers do not keep one past the first week of flower to look. For anyone making seed, these are the signs breeders look for.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a pollen sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its flower parts and a strong aroma suggests it carries the resin genes worth keeping.
- Restraint. Males that dump huge amounts of pollen early are often the less desirable in other respects; breeders prefer moderate shedders.
- Stability. Any male that also shows female flowers under ordinary conditions is discarded without exception; that tendency is the last thing anyone wants carrying into a line.
- Timing. A male that declares sex first and flowers at the same pace as the females is far more workable than an early one that releases pollen before the female is receptive.
- Structure. Short internodes, a strong central stem and a frame that matches the intended female habit are passed on; a stretched, weak-stemmed male passes that down too.
A Pack Is a Population
The error new regular-seed growers fall into is treating a pack as 10 chances at the one 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 observe the spread and choose from it.
Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to evaluate and five males to cull or assess for breeding. Among the females, expect noticeable variation: stature, flowering time, smell, bud structure, tolerance. That spread is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who keeps the best female and male has something a feminized pack cannot offer: a line of chosen parents which are their own.
Making Your Own Seed
Owning chosen parents means producing the next generation, and here the choices open up. The main approaches cover most of what small-scale breeders do.
- Open pollination. Let each male pollinate each female. It keeps the whole diversity of the line, produces a generous quantity of seed, and does no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are kept going, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation not refinement.
- Selected cross. One picked male to one or a few chosen females, everything else removed. The offspring inherit the traits of the two selected plants and show narrower spread than the parent pack. Done over several rounds with consistent selection, this is how a new line is built.
- Backcross. Take a selected offspring again to one of its original parents to fix a particular trait. It narrows the genetics fast and is useful when a single parent shows something worth keeping and the second contributed mainly vigour.
All three need only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making requires.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
A number of lines were never feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis grew over centuries, and old hybrids from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed since the breeders maintaining them regard the population as the whole value, and selfing a single clone would destroy exactly what makes the line worth preserving.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a modern hybrid. Expect large variation, long flowering times in tropical lines, tall plants, and traits that make sense in a field but not under a small room. Expect too aromas and chemistry that no longer exist in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its region of origin and the number of generations it has been grown out from the first collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
Nothing of the above makes regular seed into the best option for everyone, and claiming otherwise does the category no service.
A grower with space for three plants who needs each one of them to flower is better off with feminized seed. The same is anyone who cannot afford to inspect the plants every day around the onset of flower, because a missed male in a confined space seeds everything within days. Someone running a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a pack they cannot choose from. And a buyer who wants a specific famous cut reproduced exactly is looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to hold onto and at some point to produce something of their own; for everyone else the back shelf is safely left alone.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches each order in plain packaging with the original packs intact inside and nothing on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed import is not permitted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in a good number of places buying seeds is lawful as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others the two are permitted under licence or both is. Checking the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and no part of this article is legal advice.