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 next to it, and picked up by a shrinking group of people who understand 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 losing shelves while the bookshop 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 diversity of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists only because someone kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines that trace to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is meant to be a population, not a single plant. This article makes the case for that half-male pack: what the male is for, what a buyer loses by never seeing one, and how to get value with a pack instead of a copy.

What a Male Plant Is Actually For

The easy description of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and for a flower grower that is all it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and half is selected with the same attention as the female.

A male contributes growth habit, vigour, maturation time, tolerance to mould and pests, resin production and the terpene chemistry exactly as the female does; it simply shows several of those traits less since it does not grows a finished flower. Breeders who work with regular seed spend as much time choosing males as females, which is the effort that a feminized line borrows and can never repeat. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it does not give a second set of selected traits.

What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed

Much of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Each round of that process halves the surviving genetic variation, and after a couple of rounds what remains is close to one plant expressed in slightly different ways.

That is fine for a grower who wants that one plant. It is a loss for everyone who comes after. Recessive faults emerge: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, susceptibility to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the parent line but not in the selected clone disappear from the population altogether. A generation of such breeding leaves a market crowded with variations of a dozen plants, and a breeder trying to create something new finds there is little remaining to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the pool, and it only persist as long as somebody keep growing it.

Reading a Male Plant

Guides on choosing females are easy to find; guidance on choosing males is scarce, since most growers do not keep one long enough to look. For a grower making seed, these are the marks breeders look for.

• Restraint. Plants that dump enormous quantities of pollen all at once are often the least desirable genetically; many breeders favour moderate producers.
• Stability. A male that at the same time forms female pistils under normal conditions is rejected without exception; the tendency is the one thing worth carrying forward.
• Timing. A male that shows sex first and flowers in step with the females is more useful than an early one that releases pollen before the female is receptive.
• Structure. Short internodes, a strong central stem and branching that matches the desired female habit are inherited; a lanky, floppy male hands that down too.

What 10 Seeds Actually Give You

The error first-time regular-seed buyers 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 point of running it is to observe the spread and choose from it.

About half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to compare and five males to discard or judge for breeding. Among the females, look for noticeable variation: height, flowering time, smell, density, tolerance. This variation 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 has something a feminized pack cannot offer: a line of chosen parents which are theirs.

Three Ways to Cross

Holding chosen parents means making the next batch, and there the options multiply. Three methods cover most of what home breeders do.

• Open pollination. Let each male pollinate each female. It keeps the full diversity of the line, makes a large quantity of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are kept alive, and it is the right approach when the aim is preservation not improvement.
• Selected cross. One picked male to one or a few picked females, every other plant else culled. The offspring inherit the qualities of two specific plants and show less variation than the parent pack. Done over generations with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is built.
• Backcross. Take a selected offspring back to one of its parents to lock in a specific quality. It tightens the genetics quickly and is used when one parent has something worth keeping and the other contributed mainly vigour.

Each of these need only a isolated space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and patience. Not one of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized production requires.

Keeping Old Lines Alive

A number of lines were never feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis was grown for centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the breeders maintaining them treat diversity as the entire point, and reversing a single plant would destroy exactly what makes the line worth keeping.

Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a commercial hybrid. Expect large variation, long flowering periods in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and traits that make sense in a mountain valley but not under a tent. Expect also flavours and effects that do not appear in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, and each line marked with its origin of origin and the number of generations it has been reproduced from the original collection.

Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds

Nothing of the above makes regular seed the best choice for everyone, and claiming otherwise does the product no favours.

A grower with room for three plants who wants each one of them to finish is better served with feminized seed. The same is a grower unable to check the plants each day during the onset of flower, because a late male in a small space seeds everything within days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no use from a pack they cannot select from. And anyone who wants a specific clone-only cut repeated exactly is looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to select, to keep and eventually to make something of their own; for everyone else the back shelf is safely ignored where it is.

Practicalities

Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in plain parcels with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and no on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed import is restricted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in many places buying seeds is lawful as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed under local rules or both is. Knowing the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article is legal advice.