Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked lower than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a dwindling number of people who understand exactly what they are looking for. It is easy to read that as the end of a technology. It is nearer to the truth to read it as a library losing shelves while the paperback rack next door grows. Every feminized line began as a regular one, every new cross requires a male somewhere in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists because someone held onto regular seed. Dedicated sellers 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 single plant. This article sets out the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a buyer gives up by not growing one, and how to get value with a pack instead of a copy.

The Other Half of the Genome

The easy account of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, 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 growth habit, hybrid vigour, maturation time, tolerance to mould and pests, resin density and the aromatic profile exactly as the female does; it just shows some of those qualities less since it does not grows a finished flower. Those who work with regular seed invest as much time selecting males as females, which is the effort that a feminized cross borrows and can never replicate. Reversing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a second set of selected genes.

What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed

Much of the feminized market is built from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Each generation of that process cuts in half the surviving genetic diversity, and after two generations what is left is close to one plant repeated in slightly different forms.

This is fine for a grower who wants that single plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Hidden faults emerge: intersex tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the parent line but absent in the selected clone disappear from the gene pool altogether. A decade of this produces a market crowded with versions of a dozen plants, and a breeder trying to make something different discovers there is little left to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that refills the market, and that reservoir only exists if people keep growing it.

Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About

Guides on choosing females are everywhere; guidance on picking males is scarce, since most people never keep one long enough to look. For a grower producing seed, the following are the marks breeders watch for.

• Structure. Short internodes, a strong central stem and branching that resembles the desired female habit are inherited; a lanky, floppy male hands that down too.
• Timing. A male that declares sex early and flowers at the same pace as the females is far more useful than a very early one that sheds pollen before the 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 scent suggests it holds the resin traits worth keeping.
• Restraint. Males that release huge amounts of pollen all at once are often also the less selected genetically; many breeders prefer moderate producers.
• Stability. A male that at the same time forms female pistils under normal conditions is discarded outright; that trait is the one thing worth carrying forward.

Thinking in Numbers

The mistake new regular-seed growers make is seeing a pack as 10 attempts at the one plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the point of running it is to see the spread and select from it.

Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives around five females to compare and five males to either cull or assess for breeding. Within the females, look for real variation: stature, flowering time, aroma, density, resistance. This 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 offer: a line of selected parents that are theirs.

Three Ways to Cross

Holding chosen parents means producing the next generation, and there the choices multiply. The main approaches cover most of what home breeders do.

• Open pollination. Allow every male pollinate each female. It keeps the whole range of the line, produces a large quantity of seed, and does no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained alive, and it is the right approach when the goal is preservation rather than improvement.
• Selected cross. One picked male on one or a few chosen females, every other plant else removed. The offspring carry the traits of two specific plants and express less variation than the parent pack. Done over several rounds with stable selection, this is how a new line is built.
• Backcross. Cross a selected offspring again to one of its parents to lock in a specific trait. It narrows the range fast and is used when one parent shows something worth concentrating and the other contributed mainly vigour.

Each of these require only a isolated space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and a few weeks. Not one of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making requires.

The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars

A number of lines were never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from places where cannabis grew for centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the breeders maintaining them regard the population as the entire point, and selfing a single plant would destroy exactly what makes the line worth keeping.

Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from growing a modern hybrid. There will be wide variation, long flowering periods in equatorial lines, tall plants, and qualities that made sense in a mountain valley but not under a small room. Expect also flavours and chemistry that do not appear in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line marked with its origin of origin and the number of generations it has been reproduced from the first collection.

The Honest Exclusions

Nothing of the above makes regular seed the best option for everyone, and pretending otherwise would the product no favours.

A grower with space for three plants who needs each one of them to finish is far better off with feminized seed. The same is anyone unable to inspect the plants every day around the onset of flower, because a missed male in a small space ruins the whole crop within days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a population they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a known clone-only plant repeated exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to keep and at some point to produce something new; for anyone else the back shelf is best ignored alone.

Before You Buy

Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in plain packaging with the original packs sealed inside and nothing on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed import is restricted there. Seed law differs widely by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under licence or both is. Checking the position where you live is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.