Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a dwindling number of people who know exactly what they are after. It is tempting to see that as obsolescence. It is nearer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the bookshop next door expands. Every female-only line began as a regular one, every new cross needs a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the diversity 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, offered in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the case for that half-male pack: what the male is for, what a grower loses by not growing one, and how to get value with a pack rather than a copy.
Not Just Pollen
The easy account of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and to a flower grower that is the whole of it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and half is chosen with the same attention as the mother.
A male contributes structure, vigour, flowering time, tolerance to mould and pests, trichome production and the terpene chemistry just as the female does; it simply expresses some of those traits less visibly because it never grows a smokable flower. Those who work with regular seed spend as much time selecting males as females, which is the work that a feminized line borrows and can never repeat. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it cannot give a second line of selected traits.
The Narrowing
A great deal of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a single famous clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Every generation of that process cuts in half the remaining genetic variation, and after a couple of rounds what remains is close to one plant repeated in slightly different forms.
This is fine for a consumer who wants that one plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Hidden faults emerge: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, susceptibility to a particular mould. Traits that were present in the original line but not in the chosen clone disappear from the population altogether. A generation of this produces a market crowded with versions of the same few clones, and a anyone wanting to create something different discovers there is nothing left to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that refills the pool, and it only persist if somebody keep growing it.
Reading a Male Plant
Articles on choosing females are easy to find; advice on choosing males is rare, because most people never keep one long enough to judge. For anyone producing seed, the following are the signs breeders watch for.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a pollen cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its sepals and a clear aroma indicates it holds the terpene traits that are worth keeping.
- Restraint. Plants that dump enormous quantities of pollen all at once are frequently the least desirable genetically; many breeders favour steady shedders.
- Structure. Short internodes, a thick central stem and a frame that resembles the desired female habit are inherited; a stretched, floppy male passes that down too.
- Stability. A male that at the same time shows female pistils under ordinary conditions is discarded outright; the trait is the one thing anyone wants breeding into a line.
- Timing. A male that declares sex first and flowers at the same pace as the females is far more useful than a very early one that releases pollen before any female is ready.
What 10 Seeds Actually Give You
A error first-time regular-seed buyers fall into is seeing a pack as 10 attempts at the one plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the point of growing it is to see the range and select from it.
Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to compare and five males to either cull or judge for breeding. Within the females, expect noticeable differences: height, flowering time, aroma, bud structure, resistance. This spread is not a failure 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 cannot offer: a line of selected parents which are their own.
From One Pack to the Next
Owning selected parents is only worth something if making the next generation, and there the options multiply. Three methods account for most of what home breeders attempt.
- Backcross. Take a chosen seedling back to one of its parents to lock in a specific trait. It narrows the range quickly and is used when one parent has something worth keeping and the second contributed mainly vigour.
- Open pollination. Allow every male reach every female. It preserves the whole range of the line, produces a large quantity of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained going, and it is the right approach when the goal is preservation rather than improvement.
- Selected cross. One picked male to one or a few chosen females, everything else removed. The offspring inherit the traits of two selected plants and express narrower variation than the original pack. Repeated over several rounds with stable selection, this is how a stable line is made.
Each of these need nothing more than a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and patience. Not one of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized production does.
Keeping Old Lines Alive
Some lines were never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis grew over centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the early decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed because the breeders keeping them treat the population as the entire value, and selfing a single plant would erase exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of preserving.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from running a modern hybrid. Expect large variation, long flowering times in tropical lines, lanky plants, and qualities that make sense in a field but not in a tent. There will be too flavours and effects that no longer appear in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line marked with its origin of origin and the number of generations it has been reproduced since the original collection.
When the Library Is the Wrong Shop
Nothing of the above turns regular seed the right choice for everyone, and pretending otherwise would the product no service.
A grower with space for a handful of plants who needs each one of them to flower is far better served with feminized seed. So is anyone who cannot afford to inspect the plants every day during the onset of flower, since a missed male in a confined space ruins everything within days. Someone running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a population they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a known famous plant repeated exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to select, to keep and eventually to make something of their own; for everyone else the regular shelf is best left where it is.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in unmarked parcels with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and nothing on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed import is restricted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in a good number of places buying seeds is lawful as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed under licence or neither is. Knowing the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article is legal advice.
