Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: smaller every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and picked up by a shrinking group of people who know exactly what they are after. It is tempting to see that as obsolescence. It is closer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the paperback rack next door grows. Every female-only line started as a regular one, each new cross needs a male at some point in its pedigree, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all survives only because somebody held onto regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines going back to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is meant to be a population, not a one plant. This article makes the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a grower gives up by not seeing one, and how to work with a population rather than a clone.
What a Male Plant Is Actually For
The easy account of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and for a flower grower that is the whole of it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and half is chosen with the same attention as the female.
A male contributes structure, vigour, maturation time, resistance to mould and pests, resin production and the terpene chemistry exactly as the female does; it just shows some of those traits less visibly because it never grows a smokable flower. Breeders who work with regular seed spend at least as much time choosing males as females, and this is the work that a feminized cross borrows and can never replicate. Reversing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a different line of selected genes.
How Diversity Leaks Away
Much of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Every generation of that selfing cuts in half the remaining genetic variation, and after a couple of generations what remains is essentially one plant repeated in marginally different forms.
That is fine for a consumer who wants that single plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Hidden weaknesses surface: intersex tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Traits that were present in the parent line but not in the selected clone disappear from the gene pool altogether. A generation of this produces a market full with versions of the same few plants, and a breeder trying to create something new discovers there is little left to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the pool, and it only persist if somebody keep growing it.
Reading a Male Plant
Guides on selecting females are everywhere; advice on choosing males is rare, because most growers do not keep one long enough to judge. For anyone making seed, these are the marks breeders look for.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a thick main stem and branching that matches the intended female habit are inherited; a stretched, floppy male passes that down too.
- Timing. A male that shows sex early and flowers at the same pace as the females is more workable than an early one that releases pollen before any female is receptive.
- Stability. Any male that at the same time shows female flowers under normal conditions is rejected without exception; that 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 resin on its flower parts and a clear scent suggests it holds the terpene traits worth keeping.
- Restraint. Males that dump enormous quantities of pollen early are often also the less desirable in other respects; breeders prefer steady shedders.
What 10 Seeds Actually Give You
The mistake first-time regular-seed buyers fall into is treating a pack as 10 attempts at the one plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the value of growing it is to observe the range 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 discard or judge for breeding. Within the females, look for noticeable variation: stature, flowering time, smell, density, resistance. That variation is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who takes cuttings from the best female and the best male has something a feminized pack cannot offer: a line of chosen parents which are their own.
From One Pack to the Next
Owning selected parents means making the next batch, and here the choices multiply. Three approaches account for most of what home breeders attempt.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen seedling again to one of its original parents to fix a particular quality. It tightens the range quickly and is useful when one parent shows something worth concentrating and the second contributed mainly vigour.
- Selected cross. One picked male on one or several picked females, everything else culled. The offspring carry the traits of the two specific plants and express narrower variation than the original pack. Done over several rounds with consistent selection, this is how a new line is built.
- Open pollination. Allow each male pollinate each female. It preserves the full range of the line, produces 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 aim is preservation not improvement.
All three need 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 production does.
Landraces and Heirloom Lines
Some lines were never feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis grew over centuries, and heirloom crosses from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the people keeping them regard diversity as the entire point, and reversing a single plant would erase exactly what makes the line worth keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from growing a commercial hybrid. Expect wide variation, extended flowering times in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and qualities that made sense in a mountain valley but not under a small room. There will be also flavours and effects that do not exist in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its origin of collection and the number of generations it has been grown out since the original collection.
The Honest Exclusions
Nothing of the above turns regular seed into the right option for everyone, and pretending that it is does the category no favours.
A grower with space for a handful of plants who needs each one of them to finish is better off with feminized seed. So is a grower unable to check the plants every day around the start of flower, since a missed male in a confined space ruins the whole crop within days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a pack they cannot choose from. And anyone who is after a specific clone-only cut reproduced as closely as possible is looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to select, to hold onto and at some point to make something new; for everyone else the back shelf is best left where it is.
Practicalities
Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in plain parcels with the breeder’s packs intact inside and nothing 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 owning seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under licence or neither is. Knowing the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.