Browse 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 bought by a dwindling group of people who know exactly what they are after. It is tempting to read that as obsolescence. It is nearer to the truth to read it as a library losing shelves while the paperback rack next door expands. Every feminized line began as a regular one, each new cross requires a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists only because somebody kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines going back to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article sets out the case for that half-male pack: what the male is for, what a buyer gives up by not seeing one, and how to work with a pack instead of a copy.

What a Male Plant Is Actually For

The lazy account of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and to a flower grower that is the whole of it. To 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 structure, vigour, flowering speed, resistance to mould and pests, resin production and the aromatic profile just as the female does; it simply shows several of those qualities less visibly since it does not produce a finished flower. Breeders who breed with regular seed spend as much time choosing males as females, which is the work that a feminized cross inherits and cannot repeat. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a different set of selected traits.

What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed

Much of the feminized market is built from S1 seeds: a single famous clone, treated and crossed with itself. Each generation of that process halves the remaining genetic variation, and after two rounds what remains is essentially one plant repeated in marginally different ways.

This is acceptable for a consumer who needs that one plant. It is a loss for everyone who comes after. Recessive faults surface: hermaphrodite tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the parent line but absent in the selected clone disappear from the gene pool altogether. A generation of this leaves a market crowded with variations of the same few plants, and a anyone wanting to make something different finds there is nothing left to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the pool, and it only persist if somebody grows it.

Reading a Male Plant

Guides on choosing females are everywhere; advice on picking males is scarce, since most growers never keep one past the first week of flower to look. For a grower making seed, these are the marks breeders watch for.

• Stability. Any male that at the same time forms female pistils under ordinary stress is discarded outright; that tendency is the one thing anyone wants carrying forward.
• Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a pollen sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its flower parts and a clear scent suggests it holds the resin genes worth keeping.
• Restraint. Plants that dump enormous quantities of pollen all at once are frequently also the least selected in other respects; breeders prefer moderate producers.
• Structure. Tight internodes, a thick main stem and branching that resembles the desired female shape are inherited; a lanky, weak-stemmed male passes that down too.

Thinking in Numbers

A error first-time regular-seed growers fall into 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 choose from it.

About half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to evaluate and five males to discard or judge for breeding. Within the females, expect noticeable differences: stature, finishing time, smell, density, tolerance. That 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 now owns something a feminized pack can never supply: a pair of selected parents which are their own.

Three Ways to Cross

Holding selected parents is only worth something if making the next generation, and there the options multiply. Three approaches account for most of what small-scale breeders do.

• Open pollination. Let every male reach each female. It preserves the full range of the line, makes a generous volume of seed, and involves no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained alive, and it is the correct method when the aim is preservation rather than improvement.
• Backcross. Take a chosen seedling again to one of its original parents to lock in a specific trait. It narrows the genetics quickly and is useful when one parent shows something worth concentrating and the other contributed mainly vigour.
• Selected cross. One picked male to one or several chosen females, every other plant else removed. The seeds carry the traits of two specific plants and express narrower variation than the original pack. Repeated over generations with consistent selection, this is how a stable line is made.

All three require nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and patience. Not one of them needs the chemical reversal that feminized production requires.

The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars

A number of lines have never feminized and likely never will be: landraces gathered from places where cannabis grew over centuries, and heirloom crosses from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the breeders maintaining them regard the population as the whole value, and reversing a single clone would erase exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.

Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a commercial hybrid. There will be large variation, extended flowering periods 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 hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its origin of origin and the generation it has been reproduced from the first collection.

When the Library Is the Wrong Shop

None of the above makes regular seed into the best option for everyone, and claiming otherwise does the category no favours.

A grower with room for a handful of plants who needs each one of them to finish is far better served with feminized seed. So is anyone who cannot afford to inspect the plants every day around the onset of flower, because a late male in a small space seeds everything inside days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a pack they cannot select from. And anyone who is after a known famous cut reproduced exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to hold onto and at some point to produce something new; for everyone else the back shelf is safely ignored where it is.

Before You Buy

Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in unmarked parcels with the original packs intact inside and no on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed importation is not permitted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in many places owning seeds is legal as genetic preservation 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 responsibility, and nothing of this article is legal advice.