Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs beside it, and picked up by a dwindling number of people who know exactly what they are after. It is tempting to see that as obsolescence. It is closer to the truth to read it as a library losing shelves while the paperback rack next door grows. Every female-only line began as a regular one, each new cross needs a male at some point in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that survives at all survives because somebody 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 makes the case for that half-male pack: what the male is for, what a buyer gives up by not seeing one, and how to get value with a pack instead of a clone.
Not Just Pollen
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 which follows, and half is selected with the same care as the female.
A male contributes structure, hybrid vigour, maturation speed, tolerance to mould and pests, resin density and the terpene chemistry just as the female does; it just shows several of those traits less since it never produce a finished flower. Those who work with regular seed spend as much time choosing males as females, and this is the work that a feminized cross inherits and can never replicate. Reversing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a second line of selected traits.
How Diversity Leaks Away
Much of the feminized catalogue is built from S1 seeds: a single famous clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Each generation of that process cuts in half the remaining genetic variation, and after two rounds what is left is close to one plant expressed in slightly different forms.
That is fine for a consumer who needs that one plant. It is a loss for everyone who comes after. Recessive weaknesses surface: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Traits that existed in the original line but not in the chosen clone vanish out of the gene pool altogether. A generation of this leaves a market full with versions of the same few plants, and a breeder wanting to create something different finds there is nothing remaining to work with. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that refills the pool, and that reservoir can only exists as long as somebody keep growing it.
How to Judge a Male
Guides on choosing females are everywhere; guidance on picking males is scarce, because most people do not keep one long enough to look. For a grower making seed, the following are the signs breeders look for.
- Structure. Tight internodes, a strong main stem and branching that matches the desired female habit are inherited; a stretched, weak-stemmed male hands that down too.
- Timing. A male that declares sex early and flowers in step with the females is more useful than an early one that sheds pollen before any female is receptive.
- Stability. A male that also shows female flowers under ordinary stress is discarded without exception; the trait is the last thing worth carrying 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 genes that are worth passing on.
A Pack Is a Population
A error new regular-seed growers make is seeing a pack as 10 attempts at the same plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the point of growing it is to see the range and choose from it.
About half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives something like five females to evaluate and five males to discard or assess for breeding. Within the females, expect noticeable differences: height, finishing time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. This variation is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who takes cuttings from the strongest female and male has something a feminized pack cannot offer: a pair of chosen parents that are their own.
Three Ways to Cross
Owning chosen parents means making the next batch, and there the choices multiply. Three approaches account for most of what home breeders do.
- Selected cross. One chosen male to one or a few picked females, every other plant else culled. The offspring inherit the traits of the two specific plants and express narrower variation than the parent pack. Done over several rounds with stable selection, this is how a new line is made.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen seedling again to one of its original parents to fix a specific trait. It narrows the range fast and is useful when a single plant has something worth concentrating and the second brought mainly vigour.
- Open pollination. Allow every male pollinate every female. It preserves the full range of the line, produces a generous quantity of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained going, and it is the correct approach when the goal is preservation rather than refinement.
All three require only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and patience. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making requires.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
Some lines have never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis was grown for centuries, and heirloom crosses from the early decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed since the people keeping them regard the population as the whole value, and reversing a single clone would erase exactly what makes the line worth keeping.
Running a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a modern hybrid. Expect wide variation, long flowering periods in equatorial lines, tall plants, and qualities that made sense in a field but not under a tent. There will be too flavours and chemistry that no longer exist in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its region of origin and the number of generations it has been reproduced since the first collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
Nothing of the above makes regular seed the right option for everyone, and claiming otherwise would the category 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 every day around the start of flower, since a missed male in a confined space ruins the whole crop within days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no use from a pack they cannot choose from. And a buyer who wants a specific clone-only 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 intends to choose, to hold onto and at some point to make something new; for everyone else the back shelf is safely ignored alone.
Ordering and the Law
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in plain parcels with the breeder’s packs intact inside and no on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed importation is not permitted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in many places buying seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed 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.