Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: smaller every year, marked lower than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a shrinking number of people who understand exactly what they are looking for. It is tempting to see 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 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 exists at all survives only because somebody 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 meant to be a population, not a single plant. This article makes the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a grower loses by never growing one, and how to get value with a pack rather than a copy.

What a Male Plant Is Actually For

The lazy account 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 mother.

A male passes on growth habit, vigour, maturation speed, resistance to mould and pests, trichome production and the terpene profile just as the female does; it just shows some of those qualities less because it does not grows a smokable flower. Those who breed with regular seed invest at least as much time choosing males as females, and this is the effort that a feminized line inherits and cannot repeat. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a second set of selected genes.

The Narrowing

Much of the feminized market is built from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, treated and crossed with itself. Every round of that selfing cuts in half the surviving genetic variation, and after a couple of rounds what remains is close to one plant expressed across slightly different forms.

This is fine for a consumer who wants that one plant. It is a loss for everyone who comes after. Hidden weaknesses emerge: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that existed in the parent line but absent in the chosen clone disappear from the gene pool entirely. A decade of this produces a market full with versions of a dozen plants, and a breeder wanting to create something different discovers 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.

Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About

Guides on selecting females are easy to find; guidance on picking males is rare, since most people do not keep one long enough to judge. For a grower producing seed, these are the signs breeders look for.

• Stability. A male that at the same time forms female pistils under normal conditions is rejected without exception; that tendency is the last thing worth breeding forward.
• Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with trichomes on its flower parts and a strong aroma indicates it holds the terpene genes worth keeping.
• Structure. Tight internodes, a strong main stem and a frame that resembles the desired female shape are inherited; a lanky, weak-stemmed male hands that on too.
• Timing. A male that shows sex early and flowers in step with the females is more useful than a very early one that releases pollen before the female is receptive.
• Restraint. Males that dump huge amounts of pollen early are often also the least desirable in other respects; many breeders favour moderate producers.

A Pack Is a Population

The error new regular-seed growers fall into is treating a pack as 10 chances at the same plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the value of growing it is to observe the range and choose from it.

Roughly half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to compare and five males to either discard or judge for breeding. Within the females, look for noticeable variation: stature, flowering time, smell, 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 the best male now owns something a feminized pack can never offer: a pair of chosen parents that are theirs.

Three Ways to Cross

Holding chosen parents means producing the next generation, and there the choices open up. Three approaches account for most of what home breeders attempt.

• Open pollination. Allow each male reach every female. It keeps the full range of the line, produces a large quantity of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained alive, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation not refinement.
• Backcross. Cross a chosen offspring back to one of its original parents to fix a particular trait. It tightens the range quickly and is useful when one plant has something worth keeping and the other contributed mainly vigour.
• Selected cross. One picked male on one or several chosen females, every other plant else culled. The seeds inherit the qualities of the two selected plants and show less variation than the original pack. Repeated over generations with stable selection, this is how a new line is made.

All three 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 seed-making does.

The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars

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

Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a modern hybrid. There will be wide variation, long flowering periods in tropical lines, tall plants, and traits that made sense in a field but not in a tent. Expect also aromas and chemistry that no longer appear in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, and each line marked with its origin of collection and the number of generations it has been reproduced since the original collection.

When the Library Is the Wrong Shop

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

A grower with space for a handful of plants who needs each one of them to flower is far better off with feminized seed. The same is anyone unable to check the plants each day around the onset of flower, since a late male in a small space ruins everything within days. Someone running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a pack they cannot choose from. And a buyer who wants a specific clone-only cut reproduced as closely as possible is looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to choose, to keep and at some point to produce something of their own; for everyone else the back shelf is safely ignored where it is.

Practicalities

Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in plain packaging with the original packs sealed inside and nothing on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed importation is restricted there. Seed law varies sharply 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 allowed under licence or both is. Knowing the rules where you live is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article is legal advice.