Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced lower than the feminized packs beside it, and picked up by a shrinking group of people who know exactly what they are after. It is tempting to read that as the end of a technology. It is nearer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking 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 breadth of cannabis genetics that survives at all survives because somebody kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines that trace to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is meant to be a population, not a single plant. This article sets out the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a grower gives up by never growing one, and how to get value with a pack instead of a clone.

What a Male Plant Is Actually For

The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and to a flower grower that is all it. For 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, vigour, flowering speed, resistance to mould and pests, resin density and the terpene profile just as the female does; it simply shows several of those traits less visibly because it never produce a smokable flower. Those who breed with regular seed spend at least as much time choosing males as females, which is the work that a feminized line inherits and can never replicate. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it does not give a second line of selected genes.

What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed

A great deal of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Each generation of that process cuts in half the remaining genetic diversity, and after two generations what remains is essentially one plant repeated across slightly different forms.

This is acceptable for a consumer who wants that one plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Hidden faults surface: intersex tendencies, weak stems, susceptibility to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the original line but absent in the chosen clone disappear out of the gene pool entirely. A decade of this leaves a market full with versions of a dozen plants, and a breeder wanting to make something different finds there is little left to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the market, and that reservoir can only exists as long as people grows it.

Reading a Male Plant

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

• Restraint. Males that dump huge amounts of pollen all at once are often the least desirable in other respects; many breeders favour steady shedders.
• Stability. A male that also shows female flowers under ordinary conditions is rejected without exception; the trait is the last thing worth breeding into a line.
• Structure. Tight internodes, a strong central stem and branching that resembles the intended female shape are inherited; a stretched, floppy male hands that on too.
• Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a pollen sac and smell it. A male with resin on its sepals and a clear scent suggests it holds the resin traits that are worth keeping.
• Timing. A male that shows sex first and flowers at the same pace as the females is more useful than a very early one that sheds pollen before any female is receptive.

A Pack Is a Population

A error new regular-seed growers fall into is treating a pack as 10 chances at the same plant. It is nothing of the kind. 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.

Roughly half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to evaluate and five males to either discard or assess for breeding. Among the females, look for real variation: stature, flowering time, smell, density, resistance. 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 has something a feminized pack cannot offer: a line of selected parents that are their own.

Three Ways to Cross

Owning selected parents means making the next generation, and there the options open up. The main approaches cover most of what small-scale breeders attempt.

• Backcross. Cross a selected seedling back to one of its parents to fix a particular quality. It tightens the genetics fast and is useful when a single parent has something worth concentrating and the second brought mainly vigour.
• Selected cross. One picked male to one or a few picked females, everything else culled. The offspring carry the qualities of the two specific plants and express less spread than the parent pack. Done over several rounds with stable selection, this is how a stable line is made.
• Open pollination. Let each male reach each female. It keeps the whole range of the line, produces a large quantity of seed, and does no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are kept alive, and it is the right approach when the goal is preservation not refinement.

Each of these require nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a paintbrush or a paper bag, and patience. None of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized production requires.

The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars

Some lines have never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis grew over centuries, and old hybrids from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the breeders keeping them regard the population as the whole point, and selfing a single clone would destroy exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.

Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a modern hybrid. Expect large variation, extended flowering times in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and qualities that make sense in a mountain valley but not under a small room. There will be also aromas and effects that no longer appear in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its region of collection and the generation it has been reproduced since the first collection.

Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds

None of the above makes regular seed the right choice for everyone, and claiming otherwise would the category no service.

A grower with room for three plants who needs each one of them to flower is better off with feminized seed. The same is a grower who cannot afford to inspect the plants every day around the onset of flower, since a missed male in a confined space ruins everything within days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a pack they cannot choose from. And a buyer who wants a specific 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 eventually to make something of their own; for everyone else the back shelf is best left alone.

Before You Buy

Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in unmarked parcels with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and nothing on the exterior to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed importation is not permitted 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 permitted under licence or neither is. Checking the rules in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article is legal advice.