Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: smaller every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and picked up by a shrinking 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 losing shelves while the paperback rack next door grows. Every feminized line began as a regular one, every new cross requires a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists because someone held onto 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 one plant. This article makes the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a grower gives up by never seeing one, and how to get value with a population instead of 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 the whole of it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and half is chosen with the same care as the female.
A male passes on growth habit, hybrid vigour, maturation speed, resistance to mould and pests, resin density and the terpene chemistry just as the female does; it simply expresses some of those traits less visibly because it never produce a smokable flower. Those who work with regular seed spend at least as much time choosing males as females, and this is the work that a feminized cross inherits and cannot repeat. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it cannot give a different set of selected genes.
How Diversity Leaks Away
Much of the feminized market is built from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Each generation of that process cuts in half the remaining genetic diversity, and after two rounds what remains is essentially one plant expressed in marginally different ways.
That is fine for a grower who needs that single plant. It is a loss for everyone who comes after. Hidden faults emerge: hermaphrodite tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that existed in the original line but not in the chosen clone vanish from the population altogether. A decade of this produces a market full with versions of a dozen plants, and a breeder trying to make something different discovers there is nothing remaining to work with. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the market, and that reservoir can only persist as long as somebody keep growing it.
How to Judge a Male
Guides on selecting females are everywhere; guidance on picking males is rare, since most growers do not keep one long enough to judge. For a grower producing seed, the following are the marks breeders look for.
- Timing. A male that shows sex first and matures at the same pace as the females is far more useful than an early one that releases pollen before any female is ready.
- Structure. Short internodes, a strong main stem and branching that resembles the desired female shape are inherited; a lanky, floppy male hands that down too.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with trichomes on its sepals and a clear aroma indicates it carries the terpene genes that are worth passing on.
- Stability. Any male that also shows female pistils under normal stress is discarded outright; that trait is the one thing worth carrying forward.
- Restraint. Males that release huge amounts of pollen all at once are often the less selected genetically; breeders favour moderate producers.
Thinking in Numbers
A 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 slice of a population, and the value 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 yields something like five females to evaluate and five males to either discard or judge for breeding. Among the females, look for real differences: height, finishing time, aroma, density, tolerance. This spread is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who keeps the strongest female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack can never offer: a line of selected parents that are theirs.
Making Your Own Seed
Holding selected parents means producing the next generation, and there the options open up. The main methods cover most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Open pollination. Allow each male pollinate every female. It keeps the full diversity of the line, makes a large volume of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are kept alive, and it is the right method when the goal is preservation rather than improvement.
- Selected cross. One picked male to one or a few chosen females, every other plant else culled. The offspring carry the traits of the two specific plants and express narrower variation than the parent pack. Repeated over generations with stable choices, this is how a stable line is built.
- Backcross. Take a selected offspring again to one of its original parents to fix a specific quality. It tightens the range quickly and is useful when a single parent shows something worth concentrating and the second brought mostly vigour.
Each of these require only a separate space for the male, a paintbrush or a paper bag, and patience. None of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized production requires.
Keeping Old Lines Alive
Some lines were never feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from places where cannabis was grown over centuries, and old crosses from the early decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed because the people keeping them regard diversity as the entire value, and selfing a single plant would erase exactly what makes the line worth keeping.
Running a landrace from regular seed is different from running a commercial hybrid. There will be wide variation, long flowering times in equatorial lines, tall plants, and qualities that made sense in a field but not under a small room. Expect too aromas and effects that no longer appear in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its origin of collection and the generation it has been grown out from the first collection.
When the Library Is the Wrong Shop
Nothing of the above turns regular seed into the best option for everyone, and claiming that it is does the product no favours.
A grower with space for a handful of plants who wants every one of them to flower is better off with feminized seed. So is anyone who cannot afford to check the plants every day during the onset of flower, because a late male in a small space ruins everything inside days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a pack they cannot choose from. And anyone who is after a known clone-only cut reproduced as closely as possible is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to select, to hold onto and eventually to produce something of their own; for everyone else the back shelf is best ignored where it is.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in plain packaging with the breeder’s packs intact inside and nothing on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, as seed importation is restricted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in many places owning 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 where you live is the buyer’s responsibility, and no part of this article should be read as legal advice.