Why Breeders Still Buy Regular Seeds

Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced 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 see that as the end of a technology. It is nearer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the bookshop next door expands. Every feminized line started as a regular one, every new cross needs a male at some point in its pedigree, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists because somebody kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines that trace to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article makes the case for that half-male pack: what the male contributes, what a buyer gives up by never seeing one, and how to get value with a population 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 all it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and half is selected with the same attention as the female.

A male contributes structure, hybrid vigour, flowering speed, resistance to mould and pests, trichome production and the terpene chemistry exactly as the female does; it simply shows some of those traits less visibly because it does not produce a smokable flower. Breeders who breed with regular seed spend as much time choosing males as females, and this is the effort that a feminized cross borrows and can never repeat. Reversing a female gives pollen; it does not give a second set of selected traits.

The Narrowing

Much of the feminized market is built from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, treated and crossed with itself. Every round of that selfing cuts in half the remaining genetic diversity, and after a couple of generations what is left is essentially one plant expressed across slightly different forms.

This is fine for a consumer who wants that one plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Hidden faults surface: hermaphrodite tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that existed in the parent line but not in the selected clone vanish from the population entirely. A generation of such breeding produces a market full with versions of a dozen plants, and a breeder trying to make something different discovers there is little left to work with. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the pool, and that reservoir only exists if somebody keep growing it.

How to Judge a Male

Guides on choosing females are easy to find; guidance on picking males is scarce, because most growers do not keep one past the first week of flower to judge. For anyone producing seed, these are the signs breeders watch for.

• Restraint. Males that dump huge quantities of pollen all at once are frequently the less selected in other respects; many breeders prefer moderate shedders.
• Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its sepals and a clear aroma indicates it holds the terpene traits that are worth passing on.
• Timing. A male that shows sex early and matures in step with the females is far more useful than a very early one that releases pollen before any female is ready.
• Structure. Short internodes, a strong central stem and a frame that matches the desired female shape are inherited; a lanky, weak-stemmed male passes that down too.
• Stability. A male that at the same time forms female flowers under normal conditions is rejected outright; the trait is the last thing anyone wants breeding into a line.

What 10 Seeds Actually Give You

A mistake new regular-seed buyers make is treating 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 observe the range and select from it.

Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to compare and five males to either cull or assess for breeding. Among the females, look for real differences: height, flowering time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. That variation is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who keeps the strongest female and male now owns something a feminized pack can never offer: a pair of chosen parents that are theirs.

Making Your Own Seed

Owning chosen parents means making the next batch, and there the options open up. Three approaches cover most of what home breeders attempt.

• Open pollination. Allow each male pollinate each female. It preserves the whole range of the line, produces a large quantity of seed, and involves 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 refinement.
• Selected cross. One chosen male to one or several picked females, everything else culled. The offspring carry the traits of two selected plants and show narrower variation than the original pack. Repeated over generations with stable selection, this is how a new line is built.
• Backcross. Take a selected seedling again to one of its parents to lock in a specific quality. It narrows the genetics quickly and is used when one plant shows something worth concentrating and the other contributed mostly vigour.

Each of these need 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 requires.

Landraces and Heirloom Lines

Some lines were never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis was grown for centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the early decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed because the breeders maintaining them regard diversity as the whole point, and reversing a single clone would erase precisely what makes the line worth keeping.

Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from growing a commercial hybrid. There will be wide variation, long flowering times in tropical lines, lanky plants, and traits that make sense in a field but not under a small room. There will be too aromas and effects that do not appear in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its origin of origin and the generation it has been reproduced from the first collection.

The Honest Exclusions

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

A grower with space for a handful of plants who needs every one of them to finish is far better off with feminized seed. So is anyone who cannot afford to check the plants every day around the onset of flower, since a late male in a confined space ruins the whole crop inside days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a pack they cannot select from. And anyone who is after a known clone-only cut reproduced exactly is looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to select, to hold onto and at some point to produce something new; for everyone else the back shelf is best ignored alone.

Ordering and the Law

Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in unmarked parcels with the original packs sealed inside and no on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed import is restricted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is lawful as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others the two are permitted under local rules or neither is. Knowing the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article is legal advice.