Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a shrinking group of people who know exactly what they are looking for. It is easy 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 started as a regular one, every new cross needs a male at some point in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all survives only because somebody kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines that trace to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a buyer loses by never growing one, and how to get value with a pack instead of a clone.

The Other Half of the Genome

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 that follows, and that half is selected with the same care as the mother.

A male passes on structure, hybrid vigour, maturation speed, tolerance to mould and pests, resin density and the aromatic chemistry exactly as the female does; it just shows some of those traits less since it never grows a finished flower. Breeders who work with regular seed spend at least as much time selecting males as females, which is the effort that a feminized line borrows and can never replicate. Reversing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a different line of selected genes.

What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed

A great deal of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Every round of that process cuts in half the remaining genetic variation, and after a couple of rounds what is left is close to one plant expressed in slightly different ways.

That is fine for a consumer who needs that one plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Recessive weaknesses surface: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the parent line but not in the selected clone vanish out of the gene pool altogether. A generation of this produces a market full with variations of a dozen plants, and a breeder wanting to make something different finds there is nothing left to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the market, and it can only persist if somebody grows it.

Reading a Male Plant

Guides on selecting females are everywhere; guidance on picking males is scarce, because most growers never keep one past the first week of flower to judge. For a grower making seed, the following are the marks breeders look for.

• Structure. Tight internodes, a strong main stem and branching that matches the intended female shape are passed on; a lanky, weak-stemmed male hands that on too.
• Restraint. Males that release huge quantities of pollen all at once are often also the less selected in other respects; many breeders prefer moderate shedders.
• Timing. A male that declares sex first and matures at the same pace as the females is far more useful than an early one that sheds pollen before the female is receptive.
• Stability. A male that also forms female pistils under ordinary conditions is rejected without exception; the trait is the one thing worth carrying into a line.

A Pack Is a Population

The error first-time regular-seed buyers make is treating a pack as 10 attempts at the one plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the point of growing it is to observe the spread and select from it.

Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives something like five females to compare and five males to cull or assess for breeding. Within the females, look for real variation: height, flowering time, smell, bud structure, tolerance. This spread 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 line of chosen parents which are theirs.

Three Ways to Cross

Holding selected parents is only worth something if producing the next batch, and here the choices multiply. Three approaches account for most of what small-scale breeders do.

• Open pollination. Allow every male pollinate each female. It keeps the whole range of the line, produces a large volume of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are kept alive, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation rather than improvement.
• Selected cross. One chosen male on one or a few chosen females, every other plant else removed. The offspring inherit the traits of the two specific plants and express narrower spread than the parent pack. Done over several rounds with stable selection, this is how a new line is built.
• Backcross. Cross a selected seedling again to one of its original parents to lock in a specific quality. It tightens the range fast and is useful when one plant shows something worth concentrating and the second brought mostly vigour.

All three require nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a paintbrush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. None of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized production does.

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 first decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed because the breeders maintaining them regard diversity as the whole value, and reversing a single plant would destroy exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of preserving.

Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a commercial hybrid. Expect wide variation, extended flowering periods in tropical lines, lanky plants, and traits that make sense in a mountain valley but not in a tent. There will be too aromas and chemistry that no longer appear in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its origin of collection and the number of generations it has been grown out from the original collection.

Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds

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

A grower with room for three plants who needs every one of them to flower is better served with feminized seed. The same is a grower unable to inspect the plants every day around the start of flower, because a late male in a small space ruins everything inside days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a pack they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a known famous plant reproduced exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to select, to hold onto and at some point to make something new; for anyone else the regular shelf is best ignored where it is.

Before You Buy

Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in plain parcels with the breeder’s packs intact inside and nothing on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, as seed importation is restricted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is lawful as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed under local rules or neither is. Knowing the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and no part of this article is legal advice.