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 beside it, and bought by a shrinking 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 began as a regular one, each new cross requires a male at some point in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists because someone kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines going back to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article makes the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a buyer loses by never seeing one, and how to get value with a pack rather than a clone.
The Other Half of the Genome
The easy account of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and to 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 growth habit, hybrid vigour, flowering speed, resistance to mould and pests, trichome density and the aromatic chemistry exactly as the female does; it simply shows several of those qualities less since it does not produce a smokable flower. Those who breed with regular seed spend at least as much time selecting males as females, and this is the work that a feminized cross inherits and can never repeat. Reversing a female gives pollen; it does not give a different line of selected traits.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
A great deal of the feminized catalogue is built from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Every generation of that process halves the remaining genetic diversity, and after a couple of rounds what is left is essentially one plant repeated in marginally different forms.
This is acceptable for a grower who needs that single plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Recessive weaknesses surface: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Traits that were present in the original line but absent in the chosen clone disappear out of the gene pool altogether. A decade of this produces a market crowded with versions of a dozen clones, and a breeder trying to create something different discovers there is nothing left to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the market, and that reservoir only persist if somebody keep growing it.
Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About
Guides on choosing females are easy to find; advice on choosing males is scarce, because most growers never keep one past the first week of flower to look. For a grower making seed, the following are the marks breeders watch for.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a strong aroma indicates it holds the terpene traits that are worth keeping.
- Stability. Any male that at the same time shows female flowers under ordinary conditions is discarded without exception; that tendency is the one thing worth breeding into a line.
- Restraint. Males that release enormous quantities of pollen early are often the less selected genetically; breeders prefer moderate producers.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a strong main stem and branching that matches the intended female shape are passed on; a stretched, weak-stemmed male hands that down too.
- Timing. A male that shows sex early and flowers at the same pace as the females is far more useful than a very early one that sheds pollen before any female is ready.
A Pack Is a Population
The mistake first-time regular-seed growers fall into is seeing a pack as 10 chances at the same plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the point of running it is to observe the range and choose from it.
Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives around five females to evaluate and five males to discard or assess for breeding. Among the females, look for real variation: stature, finishing time, aroma, density, resistance. This variation is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who takes cuttings from the best female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack can never offer: a line of selected parents that are theirs.
Three Ways to Cross
Holding chosen parents is only worth something if making the next batch, and here the choices open up. Three methods account for most of what home breeders do.
- Selected cross. One chosen male to one or several chosen females, everything else culled. The seeds inherit the traits of two specific plants and show narrower spread than the parent pack. Done over generations with consistent selection, this is how a stable line is made.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen offspring again to one of its parents to lock in a particular quality. It tightens the genetics quickly and is used when a single parent has something worth keeping and the second contributed mainly vigour.
- Open pollination. Let each male pollinate each female. It keeps the whole diversity of the line, produces a large quantity of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how traditional lines are kept going, and it is the correct method when the aim is preservation rather than improvement.
Each of these need only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. None of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making requires.
Keeping Old Lines Alive
A number of lines have never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis was grown over centuries, and heirloom crosses from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the people keeping them treat diversity as the entire value, and reversing a single plant would destroy exactly what makes the line worth keeping.
Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a modern hybrid. Expect large variation, long flowering times in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and traits that made sense in a field but not in a small room. There will be also flavours and chemistry that do not appear in the commercial market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its origin of collection and the number of generations it has been reproduced from the first collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
Nothing of the above turns regular seed into the right option for everyone, and claiming otherwise does the product no service.
A grower with room for a handful of plants who needs each one of them to flower is far better off with feminized seed. So is a grower 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. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a population they cannot choose from. And a buyer who wants a specific clone-only plant repeated exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to select, to hold onto and eventually to make something of their own; for everyone else the back shelf is best left alone.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches each order in plain parcels with the original packs intact inside and no on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed importation is restricted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in a good number of places buying 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 in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.
