Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked lower than the feminized packs next to it, and picked up by a dwindling number of people who know exactly what they are looking for. It is easy to read that as the end of a technology. It is closer to the truth to read it as a library shrinking while the paperback rack next door grows. Every female-only line started as a regular one, each new cross requires a male at some point in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists only because somebody held onto regular seed. Specialists 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 sets out the argument for that half-male pack: what the male contributes, what a grower gives up by never seeing one, and how to get value with a population instead of a copy.

What a Male Plant Is Actually For

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

A male passes on growth habit, hybrid vigour, maturation time, tolerance to mould and pests, resin density and the aromatic profile just as the female does; it simply shows some of those traits less because it does not produce 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 cannot replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a different set of selected genes.

What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed

A great deal of the feminized market is built from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Every generation of that process cuts in half the remaining genetic variation, and after two generations what is left is close to one plant expressed in slightly different forms.

This is acceptable for a consumer who needs that single plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Hidden weaknesses emerge: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Traits that were present in the parent line but not in the chosen clone disappear out of the population entirely. A generation of this leaves a market full with variations of a dozen plants, and a anyone 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 it only persist if somebody keep growing it.

Reading a Male Plant

Articles on selecting females are everywhere; guidance on picking males is scarce, since most growers never keep one long enough to look. For a grower producing seed, the following are the signs breeders look for.

• Stability. A male that at the same time shows female pistils under ordinary conditions is rejected outright; that trait is the one thing anyone wants breeding forward.
• Structure. Tight internodes, a thick central stem and a frame that resembles the intended female shape are passed on; a stretched, floppy male passes that on too.
• Timing. A male that declares sex first and flowers at the same pace as the females is more useful than a very early one that releases pollen before any female is ready.
• Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with resin on its sepals and a clear scent suggests it carries the terpene genes that are worth passing on.

Thinking in Numbers

A mistake first-time regular-seed growers 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 sample of a population, and the value of growing it is to see the spread and choose from it.

About half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to evaluate and five males to either cull or judge for breeding. Within the females, expect noticeable differences: height, flowering time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. This spread is not a flaw 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 can never supply: a pair of selected parents that are their own.

Three Ways to Cross

Holding selected parents means producing the next generation, and here the choices multiply. The main methods cover most of what home breeders do.

• Selected cross. One chosen male to one or a few chosen females, every other plant else culled. The offspring inherit the qualities of the two specific plants and show narrower spread than the parent pack. Done over several rounds with consistent selection, this is how a new line is built.
• Open pollination. Let 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 alive, and it is the correct method when the aim is preservation not improvement.
• Backcross. Take a selected offspring again to one of its original parents to lock in a specific quality. It narrows the range fast and is used when a single plant shows something worth concentrating and the second contributed mostly vigour.

Each of these require only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a small bag, and patience. None of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized production does.

The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars

A number of lines were never feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from places where cannabis was grown over centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the people maintaining them regard diversity as the entire point, and reversing a single plant would erase precisely what makes the line worth keeping.

Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a modern hybrid. Expect large variation, extended flowering times in tropical lines, tall plants, and traits that made sense in a field but not in a tent. There will be too aromas and chemistry that no longer exist in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, and each line marked with its region of origin and the generation it has been grown out from the original collection.

When the Library Is the Wrong Shop

Nothing of the above turns regular seed into the best choice for everyone, and claiming that it is does the product no favours.

A grower with room for three plants who wants each one of them to finish is far better off with feminized seed. The same is a grower unable to inspect the plants every day during the start of flower, because a late male in a confined space seeds everything within days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no use from a population they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a known famous cut repeated exactly is looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to hold onto and eventually to produce something of their own; for everyone else the back shelf is safely ignored alone.

Practicalities

Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in plain packaging with the breeder’s packs intact 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 sharply by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under local rules or both is. Checking the rules where you live is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article is legal advice.