Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: smaller every year, priced lower than the feminized packs beside it, and bought by a shrinking 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 see it as a library shrinking while the bookshop next door grows. Every female-only line began as a regular one, each 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. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines going back to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article makes the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a grower gives up by not growing one, and how to work with a pack rather than a copy.
The Other Half of the Genome
The easy description of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and for a flower grower that is the whole of it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and that half is selected with the same attention as the female.
A male contributes growth habit, hybrid vigour, maturation time, resistance to mould and pests, resin production and the terpene profile exactly as the female does; it just shows some of those traits less because it does not produce a smokable flower. Those who work with regular seed invest as much time selecting males as females, which is the work that a feminized cross borrows and can never repeat. Reversing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a second set of selected traits.
The Narrowing
A great deal of the feminized catalogue is built from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Each round of that selfing halves the remaining genetic variation, and after a couple of rounds what is left is essentially one plant repeated across slightly different forms.
That is acceptable for a consumer who needs that one plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Hidden weaknesses emerge: intersex tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the parent line but not in the chosen clone disappear from the gene pool entirely. A decade of this produces a market full with versions of a dozen plants, and a anyone trying to create something different discovers there is nothing remaining to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the market, and that reservoir can only exists if people keep growing it.
How to Judge a Male
Guides on selecting females are everywhere; guidance on choosing males is rare, since most growers do not keep one long enough to look. For anyone producing seed, the following are the marks breeders watch for.
- Stability. A male that also shows female pistils under ordinary stress is rejected outright; the tendency is the one thing worth breeding into a line.
- Timing. A male that shows sex early and matures in step with the females is far more useful than an early one that sheds pollen before the female is receptive.
- Restraint. Males that release huge quantities of pollen all at once are often the less desirable in other respects; breeders prefer moderate producers.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a strong central stem and branching that matches the intended female shape are inherited; a lanky, weak-stemmed male hands that down too.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a clear scent suggests it carries the resin genes worth keeping.
A Pack Is a Population
The mistake new regular-seed growers fall into 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 value of running it is to see the range and choose from it.
About half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives around five females to compare and five males to discard or assess for breeding. Among the females, look for real differences: stature, flowering time, smell, bud structure, resistance. That spread is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who takes cuttings from the strongest female and the best male has something a feminized pack can never offer: a line of chosen parents which are their own.
From One Pack to the Next
Holding chosen parents is only worth something if making the next generation, and there the options multiply. The main methods cover most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Open pollination. Allow each male pollinate every female. It preserves the full diversity of the line, makes a generous volume of seed, and involves no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are kept going, and it is the right approach when the goal is preservation rather than refinement.
- Selected cross. One chosen male to one or a few picked females, everything else removed. The seeds inherit the traits of two selected plants and show less variation than the original pack. Done over several rounds with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is made.
- Backcross. Take a selected seedling back to one of its parents to fix a specific quality. It tightens the range fast and is used when one plant has something worth concentrating and the other brought mostly vigour.
All three require nothing more than a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and patience. Not one of them needs the chemical reversal that feminized production does.
Landraces and Heirloom Lines
Some lines were never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis grew for centuries, and old hybrids from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the people maintaining them treat diversity as the whole value, and selfing a single plant would erase exactly what makes the line worth preserving.
Running a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a modern hybrid. Expect large variation, long flowering periods in tropical lines, lanky plants, and traits that make sense in a mountain valley but not in a small room. Expect too flavours and effects that do not appear in the commercial market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its origin of collection and the generation it has been reproduced since the first collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
Nothing of the above turns regular seed the right option for everyone, and claiming that it is does the category no favours.
A grower with room for a handful of plants who needs every one of them to flower is far better served with feminized seed. The same is a grower who cannot afford to inspect the plants each day around the start of flower, because a late male in a confined space ruins everything inside days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no use from a pack they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a known famous cut reproduced as closely as possible is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to hold onto and at some point to make something of their own; for everyone else the regular shelf is safely ignored where it is.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in plain packaging with the breeder’s packs intact inside and no on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, because seed importation is restricted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in many places buying seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others the two are allowed under licence or both 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.