Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced lower than the feminized packs beside it, and bought by a dwindling group of people who understand exactly what they are after. It is easy to read that as obsolescence. It is nearer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the bookshop next door grows. Every feminized line started as a regular one, every new cross needs a male at some point in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists only 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 makes the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a buyer loses by not seeing one, and how to work with a population rather than a copy.
What a Male Plant Is Actually For
The lazy description 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 half is chosen with the same care as the female.
A male passes on growth habit, vigour, flowering time, tolerance to mould and pests, resin production and the aromatic profile exactly as the female does; it just expresses several of those qualities less since it does not grows 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 line borrows and can never replicate. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it does not give a second line of selected traits.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
Much of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a single famous clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Every round of that selfing cuts in half the surviving genetic variation, and after two rounds what is left is essentially one plant expressed in marginally different forms.
This is fine for a consumer who wants that one plant. It is a loss for everyone who comes after. Recessive weaknesses emerge: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Traits that were present in the parent line but absent in the chosen clone vanish from the population altogether. A generation of such breeding produces a market crowded with variations of a dozen clones, and a anyone trying to make something new finds there is nothing left to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the market, and that reservoir can only exists if somebody keep growing it.
Reading a Male Plant
Guides on selecting females are everywhere; guidance on choosing males is scarce, because most growers never keep one long enough to look. For a grower making seed, the following are the signs breeders look for.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a strong main stem and a frame that matches the intended female shape are inherited; a stretched, floppy male passes that on too.
- Timing. A male that declares sex early and flowers in step with the females is far more workable than a very early one that sheds pollen before any female is ready.
- Stability. Any male that also forms female flowers under normal conditions is rejected without exception; the tendency is the last thing anyone wants carrying forward.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a pollen cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a clear aroma suggests it holds the terpene traits that are worth passing on.
What 10 Seeds Actually Give You
A mistake first-time regular-seed growers make is seeing a pack as 10 attempts at the one plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the point of growing it is to see the spread and choose from it.
About half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives something like five females to compare and five males to discard or judge for breeding. Within the females, look for noticeable variation: height, flowering time, aroma, density, tolerance. That spread is not a flaw 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 can never supply: a line of chosen parents that are theirs.
From One Pack to the Next
Holding selected parents is only worth something if making the next batch, and here the choices open up. Three approaches account for most of what small-scale breeders do.
- Backcross. Take a selected offspring again to one of its original parents to fix a particular trait. It tightens the range quickly and is used when a single plant shows something worth keeping and the other contributed mainly vigour.
- Selected cross. One chosen male to one or a few picked females, every other plant else culled. The seeds inherit the qualities of two selected plants and show narrower variation than the original pack. Repeated over generations with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is made.
- Open pollination. Allow each male pollinate every female. It preserves the whole range of the line, makes a large volume of seed, and involves no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are kept alive, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation not refinement.
All three require nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a soft brush or a small bag, and patience. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making requires.
Landraces and Heirloom Lines
Some lines were never feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from places where cannabis grew over centuries, and old hybrids from the first decades of modern breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the people maintaining them regard diversity as the whole point, and selfing a single plant would destroy precisely what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.
Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a commercial hybrid. Expect wide variation, extended flowering periods in equatorial lines, tall plants, and qualities that make sense in a field but not in a small room. Expect too aromas and effects that do not exist in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its origin of collection and the generation it has been grown out since the original collection.
The Honest Exclusions
None of the above turns regular seed the right option for everyone, and pretending that it is does the category no favours.
A grower with room for a handful of plants who needs every one of them to finish is better served with feminized seed. The same is anyone unable to inspect the plants each day around the onset of flower, because a late male in a confined space seeds the whole crop inside days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a pack they cannot choose from. And anyone who is after a known famous plant reproduced 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 hold onto and eventually to produce something of their own; for everyone else the back shelf is safely left alone.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in plain packaging with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and no on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, because seed import 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 permitted under local rules or neither is. Checking the rules where you live is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.