Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked lower than the feminized packs beside it, and bought by a dwindling 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 closer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the bookshop next door expands. Every feminized line started as a regular one, each new cross needs a male at some point in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists because someone kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines that trace to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article sets out the case for that half-male 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 clone.
The Other Half of the Genome
The lazy 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 that half is selected with the same attention as the mother.
A male contributes structure, vigour, flowering time, tolerance to mould and pests, trichome density and the terpene profile exactly as the female does; it simply expresses several of those qualities less visibly because it never produce a smokable flower. Those who work with regular seed invest at least as much time selecting males as females, which is the effort that a feminized line borrows and cannot replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it cannot give a different line of selected traits.
The Narrowing
Much of the feminized market is built from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Each round of that process halves the remaining genetic diversity, and after a couple of rounds what is left is essentially one plant repeated in marginally different forms.
This is acceptable for a grower who needs that single plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Hidden weaknesses surface: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, susceptibility to a particular mould. Qualities that existed in the parent line but absent in the chosen clone disappear out of the gene pool altogether. A decade of such breeding produces a market full with versions of the same few clones, and a breeder trying to make something different finds there is little left to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the pool, and it can only exists as long as people grows it.
How to Judge a Male
Articles on choosing females are everywhere; guidance on choosing males is rare, because most people never keep one long enough to judge. For a grower making seed, these are the marks breeders look for.
- Stability. Any male that also shows female flowers under normal conditions is discarded without exception; the trait is the last thing anyone wants carrying into a line.
- Structure. Short internodes, a thick main stem and branching that resembles the intended female habit are inherited; a lanky, weak-stemmed male passes that on too.
- Timing. A male that declares sex first and flowers at the same pace as the females is more useful than a very early one that sheds pollen before any female is receptive.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a clear aroma suggests it carries the terpene genes worth passing on.
- Restraint. Males that dump huge quantities of pollen early are frequently the least selected genetically; many breeders prefer moderate shedders.
What 10 Seeds Actually Give You
A error first-time regular-seed growers make is seeing a pack as 10 attempts at the same plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the point of running 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 evaluate and five males to cull or judge for breeding. Among the females, look for real differences: stature, finishing time, aroma, bud structure, resistance. That variation is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who takes cuttings from the strongest female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack can never offer: a pair of selected parents that are their own.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning selected parents is only worth something if producing the next batch, and here the choices multiply. The main approaches account for most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or a few chosen females, every other plant else culled. The seeds inherit the qualities of the two specific plants and show narrower spread than the parent pack. Repeated over generations with consistent selection, this is how a new line is built.
- Backcross. Cross a selected offspring again to one of its original parents to lock in a specific trait. It narrows the genetics fast and is useful when a single parent shows something worth concentrating and the second brought mainly vigour.
- Open pollination. Allow each male pollinate every female. It keeps the full range of the line, makes a generous quantity of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how traditional lines are kept going, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation not improvement.
Each of these require nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and a few weeks. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making requires.
Keeping Old Lines Alive
A number of lines have never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis grew over centuries, and heirloom crosses from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed since the people maintaining them treat the population as the entire point, and reversing a single clone would erase precisely what makes the line worth keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a commercial hybrid. There will be wide variation, extended flowering times in equatorial lines, tall plants, and qualities that make sense in a mountain valley but not under a small room. Expect too aromas and effects that do not appear in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, and each line marked with its region of collection and the number of generations it has been reproduced from the first collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
None of the above turns regular seed into the best option for everyone, and pretending otherwise would the category no favours.
A grower with space for three plants who wants every one of them to finish is better off with feminized seed. The same is a grower who cannot afford to check the plants each day around the onset of flower, since a missed male in a small space seeds everything inside days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a population they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a known clone-only plant repeated exactly is looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to select, to hold onto and eventually to make something of their own; for anyone else the regular shelf is safely ignored where it is.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in unmarked packaging with the breeder’s packs intact inside and nothing on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, as seed import is not permitted there. Seed law differs widely by country: in many places owning seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under local rules or both is. Knowing the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article is legal advice.