Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked lower than the feminized packs next to it, and picked up by a shrinking number of people who understand exactly what they are after. It is tempting to see that as the end of a technology. It is nearer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the paperback rack next door grows. Every female-only line started as a regular one, each new cross requires a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists because somebody kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines that trace 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 case for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a buyer gives up by not seeing one, and how to work with a pack instead of a copy.
Not Just Pollen
The easy account of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and to a flower grower that is all it. For 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, maturation time, tolerance to mould and pests, trichome production and the terpene chemistry just as the female does; it just expresses several of those traits less since it does not grows a finished flower. Those who breed with regular seed invest at least as much time selecting males as females, and this is the effort that a feminized cross borrows and cannot repeat. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it does not provide a second set of selected traits.
How Diversity Leaks Away
Much of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Every round of that process halves the surviving genetic variation, and after a couple of rounds what remains is close to one plant expressed in slightly different forms.
That is fine for a grower who wants that single plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Hidden faults emerge: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, susceptibility to one particular mould. Qualities that existed in the parent line but not in the selected clone vanish out of the population altogether. A generation of such breeding produces a market full with versions of a dozen clones, and a breeder trying to create something different discovers there is nothing left to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the pool, and it can only exists if somebody keep growing it.
Reading a Male Plant
Articles on choosing females are easy to find; guidance on picking males is rare, because most growers never keep one long enough to look. For a grower producing seed, these are the signs breeders watch for.
- Restraint. Plants that dump enormous quantities of pollen early are often the least selected in other respects; many breeders prefer moderate shedders.
- Timing. A male that shows sex first and matures in step with the females is more workable than a very early one that releases pollen before the female is ready.
- Stability. Any male that also shows female flowers under ordinary stress is rejected without exception; the trait is the last thing anyone wants breeding into a line.
- Structure. Short internodes, a strong central stem and branching that matches the intended female shape are passed on; a stretched, floppy male hands that down too.
A Pack Is a Population
The error first-time regular-seed buyers fall into is seeing a pack as 10 attempts at the one plant. It is the opposite. 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, which means a pack of 10 seeds gives around five females to evaluate and five males to discard or assess for breeding. Within the females, expect real differences: stature, flowering time, aroma, density, tolerance. That spread is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who takes cuttings from the strongest female and male has something a feminized pack cannot supply: a pair of chosen parents which are theirs.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning chosen parents means producing the next batch, and here the choices multiply. The main methods account for most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Selected cross. One picked male to one or a few chosen females, every other plant else removed. The seeds inherit the traits of the two specific plants and show less spread than the parent pack. Repeated over generations with stable choices, this is how a stable line is built.
- Open pollination. Allow each male pollinate every female. It preserves the full range of the line, makes a large quantity of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are kept going, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation not refinement.
- Backcross. Cross a selected seedling again to one of its parents to lock in a particular trait. It tightens the genetics fast and is useful when a single parent has something worth keeping and the second contributed mostly vigour.
All three require only a isolated space for the male, a paintbrush or a paper bag, and patience. None of them needs the chemical reversal that feminized production requires.
Landraces and Heirloom Lines
Some lines were never feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from places where cannabis was grown for centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the first decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed since the breeders keeping them treat diversity as the whole value, and reversing a single plant would destroy precisely what makes the line worth keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a modern hybrid. Expect large variation, long flowering periods in tropical lines, tall plants, and qualities that made sense in a field but not under a small room. There will be also aromas and effects that do not appear in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its origin of origin and the generation it has been reproduced from the original collection.
The Honest Exclusions
None 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 three plants who wants every one of them to finish is better served with feminized seed. So is anyone who cannot afford to check the plants every day during the start of flower, since a late male in a confined space seeds everything inside days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a pack they cannot choose from. And anyone who is after a known clone-only plant repeated as closely as possible is looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to choose, to hold onto and at some point to make something new; for everyone else the back shelf is best left where it is.
Ordering and the Law
Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in unmarked parcels with the breeder’s packs intact inside and no on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed importation is not permitted there. Seed law differs widely by country: in a good number of places buying seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under licence or neither is. Checking the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and no part of this article should be read as legal advice.