Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked lower than the feminized packs next to it, and picked up by a dwindling number 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 paperback rack next door expands. Every feminized line began as a regular one, every new cross requires a male at some point in its pedigree, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that survives at all survives because someone 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 intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article makes the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a grower loses by not growing one, and how to get value with a pack instead of a clone.
The Other Half of the Genome
The lazy 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 which follows, and that half is chosen with the same attention as the mother.
A male contributes growth habit, hybrid vigour, flowering time, resistance to mould and pests, trichome density and the terpene profile just as the female does; it just shows some of those traits less visibly because it never produce a finished flower. Breeders who work with regular seed spend as much time selecting males as females, which is the work that a feminized cross inherits and cannot replicate. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it does not give 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 popular clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Every round of that process halves the surviving genetic diversity, and after two rounds what is left is essentially one plant expressed across marginally different ways.
This is acceptable for a consumer who wants that one plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Recessive weaknesses surface: intersex tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that existed in the parent line but not in the chosen clone vanish from the gene pool entirely. A generation 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 nothing left to work with. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the pool, and that reservoir only exists if somebody grows it.
Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About
Guides on selecting females are easy to find; guidance on choosing males is scarce, since most growers do not keep one long enough to judge. For anyone producing seed, the following are the marks breeders look for.
- Timing. A male that declares sex first and flowers in step with the females is far more useful than an early one that releases pollen before any female is receptive.
- Restraint. Males that release huge amounts of pollen early are often also the least desirable in other respects; breeders favour moderate shedders.
- Stability. Any male that also shows female flowers under normal conditions is discarded outright; that tendency is the last thing worth carrying forward.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a pollen cluster and smell it. A male with trichomes on its sepals and a strong scent suggests it holds the terpene genes that are worth keeping.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a thick main stem and a frame that matches the intended female habit are passed on; a lanky, weak-stemmed male hands that down too.
A Pack Is a Population
The mistake first-time regular-seed buyers make is treating a pack as 10 chances at the one plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the value of growing it is to see the range and select from it.
About half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds gives around five females to compare and five males to cull or assess for breeding. Within the females, expect real differences: height, finishing time, smell, density, resistance. That spread is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who keeps the best female and male now owns something a feminized pack cannot supply: a pair of chosen parents that are their own.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning chosen parents means making the next generation, and there the choices multiply. The main approaches account for most of what home breeders attempt.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen offspring back to one of its parents to fix a specific quality. It narrows the range fast and is useful when a single parent shows something worth concentrating and the second brought mainly vigour.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or several picked females, everything else removed. The offspring inherit the qualities of the two specific plants and show narrower spread than the parent pack. Repeated over generations with stable selection, this is how a stable line is built.
- Open pollination. Allow every male reach each female. It preserves the whole diversity of the line, makes a large volume of seed, and does no selection at all. This is how traditional lines are maintained alive, and it is the correct method when the aim is preservation rather than refinement.
Each of these need only a separate space for the male, a paintbrush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. None of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making does.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
Some lines were never feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis grew for centuries, and heirloom crosses from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the breeders keeping them treat the population as the whole point, and reversing a single clone would destroy precisely what makes the line worth keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a commercial hybrid. Expect wide variation, extended flowering times in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and traits that make sense in a field but not under a small room. Expect also aromas and chemistry that do not exist in the commercial market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its origin of origin and the number of generations it has been reproduced since the first collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
Nothing of the above makes regular seed the right option for everyone, and pretending that it is does the product no service.
A grower with room for three plants who wants each one of them to finish is far better served with feminized seed. So is a grower who cannot afford to inspect the plants each day around the start of flower, because a missed male in a small space ruins the whole crop within days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no use from a pack they cannot select from. And anyone who wants a specific clone-only plant repeated as closely as possible is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to select, to keep and eventually to make something of their own; for everyone else the back shelf is safely ignored where it is.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in unmarked packaging with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and nothing on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, as seed importation is restricted 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 local rules or neither is. Checking the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article is legal advice.