Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs beside it, and bought by a shrinking number of people who understand exactly what they are looking for. It is tempting to see that as obsolescence. It is closer to the truth to see it as a library losing shelves while the bookshop next door grows. Every feminized line started as a regular one, every new cross needs a male somewhere in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all survives because someone held onto regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines that trace to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is meant to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a grower gives up by never seeing one, and how to work with a population instead of a copy.
The Other Half of the Genome
The easy description of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and to a flower grower that is the whole of it. For 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, tolerance to mould and pests, resin production and the aromatic profile exactly as the female does; it just expresses several of those qualities less visibly because it does not produce a finished flower. Breeders who breed with regular seed invest as much time selecting males as females, and this is the work that a feminized cross inherits and can never repeat. Reversing a female yields pollen; it does not give a second line of selected genes.
How Diversity Leaks Away
Much of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, treated and crossed with itself. Every round of that process halves the surviving genetic diversity, and after a couple of generations what is left is close to one plant expressed across marginally different forms.
This is acceptable for a grower who needs that single plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Recessive weaknesses emerge: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Qualities that existed in the parent line but not in the selected clone disappear out of the gene pool entirely. A decade of this leaves a market full with variations of the same few clones, and a anyone wanting to create something different discovers there is nothing left to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the market, and that reservoir can only persist as long as people grows it.
Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About
Articles on selecting females are easy to find; advice on picking males is rare, since most people do not keep one long enough to judge. For anyone producing seed, these are the signs breeders watch for.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with trichomes on its sepals and a strong scent suggests it holds the terpene traits that are worth passing on.
- Stability. A male that also shows female pistils under ordinary conditions is rejected outright; the trait is the one thing anyone wants breeding into a line.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a thick central stem and branching that resembles the desired female habit are inherited; a stretched, weak-stemmed male hands that down too.
- Timing. A male that shows sex first and matures at the same pace as the females is more useful than an early one that releases pollen before any female is ready.
Thinking in Numbers
A mistake first-time regular-seed buyers make is treating a pack as 10 attempts at the one plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the value of running it is to see the range and choose 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 either discard or assess for breeding. Among the females, expect real differences: height, flowering time, smell, 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 best female and the best male has something a feminized pack cannot supply: a line of selected parents that are theirs.
From One Pack to the Next
Holding selected parents is only worth something if producing the next generation, and here the options open up. Three methods account for most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Open pollination. Allow every male reach each 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 maintained alive, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation not improvement.
- Backcross. Take a chosen offspring back to one of its original parents to fix a particular quality. It tightens the genetics quickly and is used when a single plant shows something worth keeping and the second contributed mostly vigour.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or a few chosen females, every other plant else removed. The seeds inherit the traits of the two specific plants and express less spread than the parent pack. Repeated over several rounds with consistent choices, this is how a new line is built.
Each of these need only a separate space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and patience. None of them needs the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making does.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
Some lines were never feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from places where cannabis was grown for centuries, and old hybrids from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed since the breeders keeping them treat diversity as the entire point, and reversing a single clone would destroy precisely what makes the line worth the trouble of preserving.
Running a landrace from regular seed is different from running a commercial hybrid. There will be wide variation, extended flowering times in tropical lines, tall plants, and traits that make sense in a mountain valley but not under a tent. There will be too flavours and effects that no longer exist in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its region of origin and the number of generations it has been reproduced from the original collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
Nothing of the above makes regular seed the best option for everyone, and claiming otherwise would the product no favours.
A grower with room for a handful of plants who wants each one of them to flower is far better served with feminized seed. So is a grower unable to check the plants each day around the onset of flower, because a missed male in a small space seeds the whole crop inside days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a pack they cannot select from. And a buyer who wants a specific clone-only cut reproduced as closely as possible is looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to choose, to keep and at some point to make something new; for anyone else the back shelf is safely ignored where it is.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in unmarked parcels 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 differs widely by country: in a good number of places buying seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under licence or neither is. Knowing the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article is legal advice.