Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked lower 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 tempting to read that as obsolescence. It is nearer to the truth to read it as a library shrinking while the bookshop next door grows. Every feminized line began as a regular one, every new cross needs a male at some point in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists only because someone 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 meant to be a population, not a one plant. This article makes the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a buyer gives up by never growing one, and how to get value with a pack rather than a clone.

The Other Half of the Genome

The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and to a flower grower that is all 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 structure, vigour, maturation speed, resistance to mould and pests, resin density and the aromatic profile exactly as the female does; it simply expresses some of those qualities less visibly since it never grows a smokable flower. Breeders who work with regular seed invest as much time choosing males as females, which is the work that a feminized cross inherits and can never repeat. Reversing a female gives pollen; it cannot give a second line of selected genes.

What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed

Much of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Each generation of that selfing halves the surviving genetic diversity, and after two generations what remains is essentially one plant repeated in marginally different forms.

This is fine for a grower who wants that one plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Hidden faults emerge: intersex tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Qualities that were present in the parent line but absent in the chosen clone vanish from the gene pool altogether. A generation of such breeding produces a market crowded with versions of the same few clones, and a anyone trying to create something different finds there is little left to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the market, and it only exists as long as somebody grows it.

Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About

Guides on selecting females are everywhere; advice on choosing males is scarce, because most people do not keep one long enough to judge. For a grower making seed, the following are the marks breeders watch for.

• Timing. A male that shows sex early and matures in step with the females is far more workable than a very early one that releases pollen before the female is receptive.
• Structure. Tight internodes, a thick central stem and branching that resembles the desired female habit are passed on; a lanky, weak-stemmed male passes that on too.
• Restraint. Males that release enormous amounts of pollen all at once are frequently also the less desirable in other respects; breeders favour steady shedders.
• Stability. Any male that also shows female pistils under normal conditions is discarded outright; that trait is the last thing anyone wants carrying forward.

Thinking in Numbers

A mistake new regular-seed growers make is treating a pack as 10 attempts at the same plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the value of growing it is to see the spread and choose from it.

Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives around five females to evaluate and five males to either cull or assess for breeding. Among the females, expect noticeable differences: height, finishing time, smell, density, tolerance. This spread is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who keeps the best female and the best male has something a feminized pack cannot supply: a pair of selected parents which are theirs.

From One Pack to the Next

Owning selected parents is only worth something if making the next batch, and here the choices multiply. The main methods cover most of what small-scale breeders do.

• Backcross. Take a selected seedling again to one of its original parents to lock in a specific quality. It narrows the genetics fast and is used when one plant has something worth keeping and the other contributed mainly vigour.
• Open pollination. Let each male reach each female. It keeps the whole diversity of the line, makes a large volume of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how traditional lines are maintained alive, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation rather than refinement.
• Selected cross. One chosen male on one or a few picked females, everything else removed. The offspring inherit the qualities of two specific plants and show less spread than the original pack. Repeated over several rounds with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is made.

Each of these need only 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 does.

Keeping Old Lines Alive

A number of lines were never feminized and likely never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis was grown over centuries, and heirloom crosses from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed because the people maintaining them treat diversity as the whole value, and selfing a single clone would destroy exactly what makes the line worth preserving.

Running a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a modern hybrid. There will be wide variation, extended flowering times in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and traits that make sense in a field but not in a small room. There will be also flavours and chemistry that no longer exist in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its region of collection and the number of generations it has been grown out from the first 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 space for three plants who wants each one of them to flower is far better off with feminized seed. So is a grower unable to check the plants each day during the onset of flower, because a missed male in a confined space seeds the whole crop within days. Someone running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a population they cannot select from. And a buyer who wants a specific clone-only cut repeated exactly is looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to keep and eventually to make something new; for everyone else the back shelf is safely left where it is.

Practicalities

Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in unmarked parcels with the original packs intact inside and no on the exterior to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed import is not permitted there. Seed law differs widely by country: in a good number of places buying seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others the two are permitted under local rules or both is. Checking the rules where you live is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.