Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: smaller every year, marked cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a shrinking number of people who know exactly what they are after. 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 paperback rack next door grows. Every feminized line started as a regular one, every new cross requires a male somewhere in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that survives at all survives because somebody kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines going back to the 1980s, offered 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 buyer gives up by never growing one, and how to get value with a population rather than a copy.

Not Just Pollen

The lazy account of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and for a flower grower that is the whole of it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and half is selected with the same care as the mother.

A male contributes structure, vigour, flowering time, tolerance to mould and pests, trichome density and the aromatic chemistry just as the female does; it simply expresses some of those qualities less visibly since it does not produce a smokable flower. Those who work with regular seed invest as much time choosing males as females, which is the work that a feminized line inherits and can never repeat. Reversing a female gives pollen; it does not give a different line of selected traits.

How Diversity Leaks Away

Much of the feminized catalogue is built from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Every round of that process halves the surviving genetic variation, and after two rounds what remains is essentially one plant repeated across slightly different ways.

That is acceptable for a consumer who wants that single plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Recessive faults surface: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, susceptibility to a particular mould. Traits that existed in the original line but not in the chosen clone disappear out of the population altogether. A decade of this leaves a market full with variations of a dozen clones, and a breeder trying to make something different finds there is little left to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the pool, and it can only exists as long as people keep growing it.

Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About

Guides on choosing females are everywhere; guidance on choosing males is scarce, because most people never keep one past the first week of flower to look. For anyone making seed, the following are the signs breeders look for.

  • Restraint. Males that dump enormous quantities of pollen all at once are frequently also the less selected genetically; breeders prefer steady shedders.
  • Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a pollen sac and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a strong scent indicates it carries the terpene genes that are worth passing on.
  • Structure. Short internodes, a strong central stem and a frame that matches the desired female shape are passed on; a stretched, weak-stemmed male passes that on too.
  • Stability. Any male that at the same time shows female flowers under ordinary conditions is rejected without exception; that tendency is the one thing anyone wants breeding forward.

A Pack Is a Population

A error new regular-seed buyers fall into is seeing a pack as 10 attempts at the one plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the point of running it is to observe 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 cull or judge for breeding. Among the females, look for noticeable differences: height, flowering time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. That variation is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who keeps the strongest female and male now owns something a feminized pack cannot supply: a pair of selected parents that are their own.

Making Your Own Seed

Owning chosen parents is only worth something if producing the next batch, and here the choices multiply. Three approaches cover most of what small-scale breeders attempt.

  • Open pollination. Allow every male pollinate each female. It keeps the whole range of the line, makes a generous volume of seed, and does no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained going, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation rather than refinement.
  • Backcross. Take a chosen offspring back to one of its parents to fix a specific quality. It tightens the range quickly and is used when a single plant has something worth keeping and the other brought mostly vigour.
  • Selected cross. One chosen male on one or several chosen females, every other plant else culled. The seeds carry the traits of the two selected plants and express narrower spread than the original pack. Done over several rounds with consistent selection, this is how a stable line is built.

Each of these require nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and patience. Not one of them needs the chemical reversal that feminized production requires.

Landraces and Heirloom Lines

Some lines have never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis was grown for centuries, and heirloom crosses from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed since the breeders keeping them treat the population as the entire point, and selfing a single clone would destroy exactly what makes the line worth preserving.

Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a commercial hybrid. Expect large variation, long flowering times in tropical lines, lanky plants, and qualities that make sense in a mountain valley but not under a small room. There will be also flavours and effects that no longer appear in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its origin of origin and the generation it has been grown out since the original collection.

When the Library Is the Wrong Shop

None of the above turns regular seed the right option for everyone, and claiming otherwise would the product no service.

A grower with space for a handful of plants who needs every one of them to finish is better served with feminized seed. So is anyone unable to check the plants each day around the start of flower, since a missed male in a confined space seeds everything inside days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no use from a population they cannot choose from. And a buyer who is after a known 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 select, to hold onto and at some point to produce something new; for everyone else the regular shelf is best ignored alone.

Practicalities

Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in unmarked parcels with the original packs sealed inside and nothing on the exterior to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed importation is restricted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others the two are permitted under local rules or both is. Knowing the position where you live is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.