Walk 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 picked up by a shrinking group of people who understand exactly what they are after. It is easy to see that as obsolescence. It is nearer to the truth to read it as a library losing shelves while the bookshop next door grows. Every feminized line began as a regular one, each new cross requires a male at some point in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all survives because someone held onto regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines going back to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article makes the case for that half-male pack: what the male is for, what a grower loses by not growing one, and how to work with a population rather than a copy.

The Other Half of the Genome

The lazy 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 that half is chosen 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 aromatic profile exactly as the female does; it just shows several of those traits less visibly since it does not produce a finished flower. Those who breed with regular seed spend at least as much time selecting males as females, and this is the work that a feminized cross borrows and cannot replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it does not give a second set of selected traits.

The Narrowing

Much of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Each generation of that selfing halves the surviving genetic diversity, and after two generations what remains is essentially one plant expressed across slightly different ways.

That is fine for a grower who wants that single plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Recessive weaknesses emerge: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Traits that existed in the original line but absent in the chosen clone vanish from the population altogether. A decade of this leaves a market crowded with variations of the same few plants, and a anyone wanting to make something different finds there is little remaining to work with. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that refills the market, and that reservoir can only persist as long as people grows it.

Reading a Male Plant

Guides on selecting females are easy to find; advice on picking males is scarce, since most growers do not keep one long enough to judge. For anyone producing seed, the following are the marks breeders watch for.

• Timing. A male that declares sex first and flowers at the same pace as the females is far more useful than an early one that releases pollen before any female is receptive.
• Structure. Tight internodes, a thick central stem and a frame that resembles the desired female shape are passed on; a lanky, weak-stemmed male passes that down too.
• Restraint. Males that dump huge quantities of pollen all at once are frequently also the less selected in other respects; breeders prefer steady shedders.
• Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a pollen sac and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a strong scent indicates it carries the terpene genes that are worth passing on.
• Stability. Any male that at the same time forms female flowers under normal stress is rejected outright; the tendency is the last thing anyone wants carrying forward.

A Pack Is a Population

A mistake first-time regular-seed growers make is seeing a pack as 10 chances at the same plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the value of growing it is to observe the spread and select from it.

About half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to compare and five males to either cull or assess for breeding. Among the females, expect noticeable variation: stature, flowering time, smell, bud structure, tolerance. That variation is not a flaw 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 supply: a line of chosen parents that are theirs.

Three Ways to Cross

Holding chosen parents is only worth something if making the next generation, and here the options open up. Three methods account for most of what home breeders attempt.

• Selected cross. One chosen male to one or a few picked females, everything else culled. The offspring carry the qualities of the two specific plants and show narrower variation than the parent pack. Repeated over several rounds with consistent choices, this is how a new line is made.
• Open pollination. Allow each male reach every female. It preserves the whole range of the line, produces a large 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 rather than improvement.
• Backcross. Take a chosen seedling back to one of its original parents to fix a specific quality. It narrows the genetics fast and is used when a single parent has something worth concentrating and the other contributed mainly vigour.

Each of these require only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. Not one of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized production does.

Landraces and Heirloom Lines

Some lines were never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis was grown for centuries, and old hybrids from the first decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed because the breeders keeping them treat diversity as the whole value, and reversing a single plant would destroy exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of preserving.

Running a landrace from regular seed is different from running a commercial hybrid. Expect large variation, extended flowering times in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and traits that make sense in a field but not under a small room. Expect also aromas and effects that no longer exist in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line marked with its origin of collection and the number of generations it has been grown out since the first collection.

Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds

Nothing of the above makes regular seed the right choice for everyone, and pretending otherwise does the product no service.

A grower with space for a handful of plants who wants each one of them to flower is far better served with feminized seed. So is anyone who cannot afford to inspect the plants every day during the onset of flower, since a late male in a small space seeds everything inside days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a pack they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a known famous cut repeated as closely as possible is looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to keep and eventually to make something of their own; for everyone else the regular shelf is best left where it is.

Practicalities

Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in unmarked parcels with the original packs sealed inside and no on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed importation is restricted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in many places buying seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed under local rules or neither is. Knowing the position where you live is the buyer’s job, and no part of this article should be read as legal advice.