Browse 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 shrinking number of people who understand exactly what they are looking for. It is tempting 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 paperback rack next door expands. Every female-only line started as a regular one, every new cross requires a male somewhere in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all survives only because somebody kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines that trace to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is meant to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a buyer gives up 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 all it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and half is selected with the same attention as the mother.
A male passes on structure, vigour, flowering speed, resistance to mould and pests, resin production and the aromatic profile exactly as the female does; it just shows several of those traits less visibly since it never grows a finished flower. Those who work with regular seed spend at least as much time selecting males as females, which is the effort that a feminized cross borrows and can never repeat. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it does not give a second line of selected traits.
The Narrowing
Much of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a single famous clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Every generation of that process halves the remaining genetic variation, and after two rounds what is left is close to one plant repeated across slightly different forms.
That is acceptable for a grower who wants that single plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Recessive faults emerge: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the original line but absent in the selected clone disappear from the population altogether. A decade of this produces a market crowded with versions of a dozen clones, and a anyone trying to create something new finds there is nothing remaining to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the market, and it only persist as long as somebody grows it.
Reading a Male Plant
Articles on choosing females are easy to find; advice on picking males is rare, since most people do not keep one long enough to look. For anyone making seed, the following are the marks breeders watch for.
- Restraint. Males that release huge quantities of pollen all at once are often also the less desirable in other respects; many breeders favour steady producers.
- Stability. Any male that also forms female flowers under normal stress is rejected outright; the trait is the one thing anyone wants breeding into a line.
- Structure. Short internodes, a strong central stem and branching that matches the desired female habit are passed on; a stretched, floppy male passes that on too.
- Timing. A male that declares sex early and matures at the same pace as the females is more workable than an early one that sheds pollen before any female is ready.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a pollen cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a strong scent suggests it holds the terpene traits that are worth passing on.
A Pack Is a Population
A error 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 value of running it is to observe the spread 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 either discard or assess for breeding. Among the females, look for noticeable differences: stature, finishing time, smell, bud structure, resistance. That spread is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who takes cuttings from the best female and male now owns something a feminized pack cannot offer: a line of selected parents which are theirs.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning selected parents means producing the next generation, and there the choices open up. The main approaches account for most of what home breeders do.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or several picked females, every other plant else culled. The seeds carry the traits of two specific plants and express narrower spread than the original pack. Repeated over generations with stable selection, this is how a stable line is made.
- Backcross. Take a selected seedling back to one of its original parents to lock in a specific trait. It narrows the range fast and is useful when one parent has something worth keeping and the other contributed mainly vigour.
- Open pollination. Allow each male pollinate every female. It keeps the full diversity of the line, produces a generous volume of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how traditional lines are maintained going, and it is the correct method when the aim is preservation not improvement.
Each of these need only a separate 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 have never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis grew for centuries, and heirloom crosses from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed since the people maintaining them regard the population as the entire point, and reversing a single plant would destroy precisely what makes the line worth the trouble of preserving.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a commercial hybrid. There will be wide variation, long flowering periods in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and qualities that made sense in a field but not under a tent. Expect too aromas and chemistry that do not appear in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its region of collection and the number of generations it has been reproduced since the original collection.
The Honest Exclusions
None of the above turns regular seed the right choice for everyone, and claiming that it is would the product no service.
A grower with room for three plants who needs each one of them to flower is better served with feminized seed. So is a grower who cannot afford to check the plants every day during the start of flower, since a late male in a small space ruins the whole crop within days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a population they cannot choose from. And a buyer who is after a known famous cut reproduced exactly is looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to keep and at some point to produce something of their own; for everyone else the regular shelf is best ignored alone.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches each order in plain packaging with the original packs sealed inside and nothing on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed import is restricted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in many places buying seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed under local rules or both is. Knowing the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and no part of this article should be read as legal advice.