Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked 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 nearer to the truth to read it as a library shrinking while the bookshop 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 diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists because someone held onto regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines going back to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a grower gives up by not growing one, and how to work with a pack rather than a copy.
The Other Half of the Genome
The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and for a flower grower that is all it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and that half is chosen with the same care as the female.
A male contributes growth habit, hybrid vigour, maturation speed, tolerance to mould and pests, trichome production and the terpene profile just as the female does; it simply shows several of those qualities less visibly since it never grows a smokable flower. Those who breed with regular seed spend as much time selecting males as females, and this is the work that a feminized cross borrows and cannot replicate. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it does not provide a second line of selected genes.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
Much of the feminized market is built from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Every round of that selfing cuts in half the remaining genetic variation, and after a couple of rounds what is left is close to one plant expressed in slightly different forms.
This is acceptable for a consumer who wants that one plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Recessive faults emerge: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Traits that were present in the original line but not in the chosen clone vanish from the gene pool altogether. A generation of this leaves a market crowded with variations of the same few clones, and a breeder trying to make something new discovers there is nothing remaining to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the market, and it can only persist if somebody keep growing it.
Reading a Male Plant
Articles on selecting females are easy to find; guidance on picking males is rare, because most people never keep one past the first week of flower to look. For anyone making seed, these are the marks breeders watch for.
- Timing. A male that declares sex first and matures in step with the females is more useful than a very early one that sheds pollen before any female is receptive.
- Structure. Short internodes, a thick central stem and branching that matches the intended female habit are passed on; a lanky, weak-stemmed male passes that down too.
- Stability. A male that at the same time shows female flowers under ordinary conditions is discarded outright; the trait is the one thing anyone wants carrying forward.
- Restraint. Plants that dump huge quantities of pollen all at once are often the less selected in other respects; many breeders prefer steady producers.
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 real outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the point of growing it is to observe the spread and choose from it.
About half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to evaluate and five males to cull or assess for breeding. Among the females, look for real differences: stature, finishing time, aroma, bud structure, resistance. This variation is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who takes cuttings from the best female and the best male has something a feminized pack can never supply: a pair of selected parents that are their own.
Three Ways to Cross
Holding selected parents means producing the next batch, and here the choices multiply. The main methods account for most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Open pollination. Let every male reach each female. It preserves the full diversity of the line, makes a large volume of seed, and involves no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained alive, and it is the correct method when the goal is preservation rather than improvement.
- Backcross. Cross a selected offspring again to one of its original parents to fix a particular trait. It tightens the genetics quickly and is used when a single parent shows something worth keeping and the second contributed mostly vigour.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or several chosen females, everything else culled. The offspring carry the qualities of two selected plants and show less variation than the original pack. Done over several rounds with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is made.
All three need only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a small bag, and a few weeks. None of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making does.
Landraces and Heirloom Lines
A number of lines were never feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis was grown over centuries, and heirloom crosses from the early decades of modern breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the breeders maintaining them treat the population as the entire point, and selfing a single plant would destroy exactly what makes the line worth keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from growing a modern hybrid. Expect wide variation, long flowering periods in tropical lines, lanky plants, and qualities that made sense in a field but not in a small room. Expect too aromas and chemistry that do not exist in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line marked with its origin of collection and the generation it has been reproduced from the first collection.
The Honest Exclusions
Nothing of the above makes regular seed into the right choice for everyone, and claiming that it is would the product no favours.
A grower with space for a handful of plants who needs every one of them to flower is far better off with feminized seed. The same is a grower who cannot afford to inspect the plants every day during the start of flower, because a missed male in a confined space ruins the whole crop within days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a pack they cannot select from. And a buyer who is after a specific clone-only plant reproduced exactly is 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 anyone else the regular shelf is safely ignored where it is.
Ordering and the Law
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches each order in unmarked packaging with the breeder’s packs intact inside and no on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, because seed import is restricted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed under local rules or both is. Knowing the rules where you live is the buyer’s responsibility, and no part of this article is legal advice.