Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: smaller every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs beside it, and picked up by a dwindling number 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 paperback rack next door grows. Every female-only line started as a regular one, every new cross requires a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that exists at all survives because someone held onto regular seed. Dedicated sellers 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 single plant. This article sets out the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a buyer loses by not seeing one, and how to work with a pack rather than a clone.
Not Just Pollen
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 half is chosen with the same care as the mother.
A male contributes structure, vigour, maturation time, tolerance to mould and pests, resin production and the aromatic chemistry exactly as the female does; it simply shows several of those traits less visibly since it never produce a smokable flower. Those who breed with regular seed spend as much time selecting males as females, which is the work that a feminized cross inherits and can never replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it does not provide a different set of selected genes.
How Diversity Leaks Away
A great deal of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, treated and crossed with itself. Each round of that selfing halves the surviving genetic diversity, and after two generations what remains is close to one plant repeated in marginally different ways.
This is acceptable for a consumer who wants that single plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Hidden faults surface: hermaphrodite tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Traits that existed in the parent line but not in the selected clone vanish out of the population altogether. A generation of this leaves a market crowded with versions of a dozen clones, and a breeder trying to create something different finds there is nothing remaining to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the pool, and it can only persist if people grows it.
Reading a Male Plant
Guides on choosing females are easy to find; advice on choosing males is scarce, because most people do not keep one long enough to judge. For anyone producing seed, the following are the marks breeders look for.
- Structure. Short internodes, a thick central stem and a frame that resembles the intended female habit are passed on; a stretched, floppy male hands that down too.
- Stability. A male that also shows female flowers under ordinary conditions is discarded outright; the trait is the last thing anyone wants breeding into a line.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a pollen sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its flower parts and a strong aroma indicates it carries the terpene traits that are worth passing on.
- Restraint. Males that dump enormous quantities of pollen all at once are frequently also the less selected in other respects; many breeders prefer moderate shedders.
Thinking in Numbers
The error new 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 real outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the value of running it is to observe the range and select from it.
About half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to evaluate and five males to either discard or judge for breeding. Among the females, look for noticeable differences: height, flowering time, aroma, density, tolerance. That spread is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who keeps the strongest female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack can never supply: a line of chosen parents which are theirs.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning chosen parents is only worth something if producing the next batch, and there the choices open up. Three methods account for most of what home breeders attempt.
- Open pollination. Let every male reach each female. It preserves the full diversity of the line, produces 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 aim is preservation rather than improvement.
- Selected cross. One chosen male on one or several chosen females, every other plant else removed. The offspring inherit the qualities of the two specific plants and express less spread than the original pack. Done over several rounds with consistent choices, this is how a new line is built.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen offspring again to one of its original parents to fix a specific trait. It tightens the genetics fast and is used when a single plant shows something worth keeping and the second brought mainly vigour.
All three require nothing more than a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. None of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making requires.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
A number of lines have never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis was grown over centuries, and heirloom crosses from the early decades of modern breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the people maintaining them treat diversity as the entire point, and selfing a single plant would destroy precisely what makes the line worth preserving.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a commercial hybrid. Expect large variation, long flowering periods in tropical lines, lanky plants, and traits that made sense in a mountain valley but not under a small room. Expect too flavours and chemistry that no longer appear in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line marked with its region of collection and the number of generations it has been grown out since the first collection.
The Honest Exclusions
None of the above turns regular seed into the right choice for everyone, and pretending that it is would the category no favours.
A grower with space for three plants who needs every one of them to flower is far better served with feminized seed. So is anyone who cannot afford to inspect the plants each day around the start of flower, because a late male in a small space ruins everything within days. Someone running a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a population they cannot choose from. And a buyer who wants a known clone-only plant reproduced exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to hold onto and eventually to make something new; for anyone else the back shelf is best ignored where it is.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in unmarked parcels with the original packs sealed inside and no on the exterior to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed import is not permitted there. Seed law differs sharply by country: in a good number of places buying seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others the two are permitted under licence or both is. Checking the rules where you live is the buyer’s job, and no part of this article should be read as legal advice.