Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a dwindling group of people who understand exactly what they are looking for. It is tempting to read that as the end of a technology. It is closer 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 needs a male at some point in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that exists at all survives only because someone kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines going back to the 1980s, sold 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 seeing one, and how to work with a population rather than a copy.

What a Male Plant Is Actually For

The easy account of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and for a flower grower that is the whole of it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and half is chosen with the same care as the female.

A male passes on growth habit, hybrid vigour, flowering speed, tolerance to mould and pests, resin production and the terpene profile exactly as the female does; it simply shows some of those traits less since it never grows a smokable flower. Those who work with regular seed spend as much time choosing males as females, which is the work that a feminized cross inherits and can never repeat. Reversing a female yields pollen; it does not give a different line of selected traits.

What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed

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

That is acceptable for a grower who needs that one plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Recessive weaknesses emerge: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, susceptibility to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the parent line but not in the selected clone disappear out of the population altogether. A generation of this leaves a market crowded with variations of the same few plants, and a breeder trying to create something different finds there is little left to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the pool, and it only exists as long as people grows it.

How to Judge a Male

Articles on choosing females are easy to find; advice on picking males is scarce, because most growers never keep one long enough to judge. For anyone producing seed, the following are the marks breeders watch for.

• Stability. A male that also shows female flowers under normal stress is rejected without exception; that tendency is the one thing worth breeding forward.
• Timing. A male that shows sex early and matures in step with the females is more workable than a very early one that releases pollen before the female is ready.
• Restraint. Males that release huge amounts of pollen early are often the least desirable genetically; breeders favour moderate shedders.
• Structure. Short internodes, a thick main stem and branching that matches the intended female shape are inherited; a stretched, weak-stemmed male hands that on too.
• Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with trichomes on its flower parts and a clear scent suggests it holds the resin traits that are worth keeping.

A Pack Is a Population

A mistake first-time regular-seed buyers make is seeing a pack as 10 attempts at the same plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the point of growing it is to see the spread and choose from it.

Roughly half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to evaluate and five males to either cull or assess for breeding. Within the females, expect noticeable differences: height, finishing time, smell, density, tolerance. That variation 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 cannot supply: a pair of selected parents that are their own.

From One Pack to the Next

Owning selected parents is only worth something if producing the next generation, and there the options open up. The main methods account for most of what home breeders do.

• Backcross. Take a selected seedling back to one of its original parents to fix a specific trait. It narrows the genetics quickly and is useful when a single parent has something worth concentrating and the second brought mainly vigour.
• Open pollination. Allow every male reach every female. It preserves the full diversity of the line, makes a large quantity of seed, and does 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 refinement.
• Selected cross. One chosen male to one or several chosen females, every other plant else culled. The offspring inherit the qualities of two specific plants and express less variation than the original pack. Repeated over several rounds with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is built.

Each of these require only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a small bag, and patience. Not one of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making does.

Keeping Old Lines Alive

Some lines have never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis was grown for centuries, and old hybrids from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the people keeping them regard diversity as the whole value, and selfing a single plant would erase exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of preserving.

Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from growing a modern hybrid. Expect large variation, extended flowering periods in tropical lines, lanky plants, and traits that make sense in a field but not under a tent. There will be too flavours and effects that do not exist in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its region of origin and the generation it has been reproduced from the original collection.

When the Library Is the Wrong Shop

None of the above turns regular seed the right choice for everyone, and pretending that it is would 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. The same is a grower who cannot afford to inspect the plants each day around the onset of flower, since a late male in a confined space seeds everything inside days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a pack they cannot choose from. And anyone who is after a known clone-only cut repeated as closely as possible is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to keep and at some point to produce something new; for anyone else the regular shelf is best ignored where it is.

Practicalities

Breeder Regular Seeds sends each 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 taken, because seed importation is not permitted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others the two are allowed under local rules or both is. Knowing the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.