Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and picked up by a shrinking group of people who understand exactly what they are looking for. It is easy to see that as the end of a technology. It is closer 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, each new cross needs a male at some point in its pedigree, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists only because someone kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines going back to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article sets out the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a grower loses by never seeing one, and how to get value with a pack instead of a clone.
Not Just Pollen
The lazy account 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 which follows, and that half is chosen with the same care as the mother.
A male contributes structure, vigour, flowering time, resistance to mould and pests, trichome density and the aromatic profile exactly as the female does; it simply shows some of those qualities less since it never grows a smokable flower. Those who breed with regular seed spend at least as much time choosing males as females, which is the effort that a feminized line borrows and cannot replicate. Reversing a female gives pollen; it does not provide a second line of selected genes.
How Diversity Leaks Away
A great deal of the feminized market is built from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Each round of that selfing cuts in half the remaining genetic diversity, and after a couple of generations what is left is essentially one plant repeated in slightly different forms.
That is acceptable for a consumer who needs that one plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Recessive weaknesses emerge: hermaphrodite tendencies, brittle stems, susceptibility to one particular mould. Traits that existed in the original line but absent in the chosen clone disappear from the gene pool altogether. A generation of this leaves a market full with variations of a dozen plants, and a anyone trying to create something different finds there is little left to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that refills the pool, and it can only exists as long as people keep growing it.
How to Judge a Male
Articles on choosing females are everywhere; advice on picking males is rare, because most growers do not keep one long enough to look. For a grower making seed, the following are the signs breeders look for.
- Stability. A male that at the same time forms female pistils under normal stress is discarded without exception; the trait is the one thing worth breeding forward.
- Timing. A male that shows sex early and matures in step with the females is more useful than a very early one that releases pollen before any female is receptive.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its sepals and a clear aroma indicates it holds the resin genes worth keeping.
- Restraint. Males that dump huge quantities of pollen all at once are frequently the least selected genetically; breeders favour steady shedders.
- Structure. Short internodes, a strong main stem and a frame that matches the intended female shape are passed on; a stretched, floppy male passes that on too.
Thinking in Numbers
The error first-time regular-seed buyers make is treating a pack as 10 attempts at the same plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the point of growing it is to observe 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. Within the females, look for real differences: height, finishing time, aroma, density, tolerance. This variation is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who keeps the strongest female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack can never offer: a pair of selected parents that are theirs.
Making Your Own Seed
Owning chosen parents means producing the next generation, and here the choices open up. The main approaches account for most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen offspring again to one of its parents to lock in a specific quality. It narrows the genetics fast and is useful when one parent has something worth keeping and the other brought mostly vigour.
- Open pollination. Let every male reach every female. It keeps the full range 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 method when the aim is preservation not improvement.
- Selected cross. One picked male on one or several picked females, everything else culled. The seeds inherit the traits of two selected plants and show narrower spread than the original pack. Repeated over several rounds with consistent selection, this is how a new line is made.
Each of these require only a isolated space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and a few weeks. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making does.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
A number of lines have never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from places where cannabis was grown for centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the breeders maintaining them treat diversity as the whole point, and reversing a single plant would erase precisely what makes the line worth keeping.
Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a commercial hybrid. Expect wide variation, extended flowering times in tropical lines, tall plants, and traits that made sense in a field but not under a tent. There will be also aromas and effects that no longer exist in the commercial market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, and each line marked with its origin of origin and the number of generations it has been grown out since the first collection.
The Honest Exclusions
Nothing of the above turns regular seed the best choice for everyone, and pretending that it is does the product no favours.
A grower with space for three plants who needs every one of them to finish is better served with feminized seed. So is a grower who cannot afford to check the plants every day around the onset of flower, because a missed male in a confined space ruins everything inside days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a pack they cannot select from. And a buyer who wants a known famous cut reproduced as closely as possible 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 at some point to produce something of their own; for anyone else the back shelf is best left where it is.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in plain packaging with the original packs intact inside and no on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed importation is restricted there. Seed law differs sharply by country: in many places owning seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others the two are allowed under licence or neither is. Knowing the rules where you live is the buyer’s job, and no part of this article should be read as legal advice.