Why Breeders Still Buy Regular Seeds

Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: smaller every year, marked cheaper than the feminized packs beside it, and picked up 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 grows. Every feminized line began as a regular one, each new cross requires 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. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines going back to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the case for that half-male pack: what the male is for, what a buyer gives up by not growing one, and how to work with a population instead of a clone.

Not Just Pollen

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

A male passes on structure, hybrid vigour, flowering time, tolerance to mould and pests, resin production and the terpene chemistry just as the female does; it simply shows some of those traits less visibly since it never grows a finished flower. Those who work with regular seed spend at least as much time choosing males as females, which is the work that a feminized cross borrows and cannot replicate. Reversing a female gives pollen; it does not provide a different line of selected traits.

What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed

A great deal of the feminized catalogue is built from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Every round of that selfing cuts in half the surviving genetic diversity, and after two rounds what is left is close to one plant expressed in slightly different forms.

This is acceptable for a grower who wants that one plant. It is a loss for everyone who comes after. Hidden weaknesses emerge: hermaphrodite tendencies, brittle stems, susceptibility to a particular mould. Qualities that existed in the original line but not in the selected clone disappear out of the population altogether. A generation of such breeding produces a market full with variations of the same few clones, and a breeder trying to create something different discovers there is little left to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the pool, and that reservoir can only persist as long as somebody grows it.

Reading a Male Plant

Guides on choosing females are everywhere; guidance on picking males is scarce, because most people never keep one past the first week of flower to look. For anyone making seed, the following are the signs breeders look for.

• Stability. A male that at the same time shows female pistils under ordinary stress is rejected outright; the tendency is the last thing worth carrying forward.
• Restraint. Males that dump enormous amounts of pollen early are frequently the less desirable in other respects; breeders prefer steady shedders.
• Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a pollen sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its flower parts and a strong scent indicates it holds the resin genes worth passing on.
• Timing. A male that declares sex first and flowers at the same pace as the females is more workable than a very early one that releases pollen before any female is ready.
• Structure. Short internodes, a strong main stem and a frame that matches the intended female habit are passed on; a lanky, weak-stemmed male hands that on too.

Thinking in Numbers

A mistake first-time regular-seed buyers make is seeing a pack as 10 chances at the one plant. It is nothing of the kind. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the value of running it is to see the range and choose from it.

Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to evaluate and five males to discard or judge for breeding. Among the females, look for real differences: stature, flowering time, aroma, bud structure, resistance. This variation is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who keeps the best female and male now owns something a feminized pack can never offer: a line of chosen parents which are their own.

From One Pack to the Next

Holding selected parents means producing the next batch, and there the choices open up. Three approaches cover most of what small-scale breeders do.

• Open pollination. Let every male pollinate each female. It keeps the whole diversity of the line, makes a generous quantity of seed, and involves no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are kept going, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation not refinement.
• Backcross. Take a chosen seedling back to one of its original parents to lock in a particular quality. It narrows the range quickly and is useful when one parent shows something worth concentrating and the second contributed mostly vigour.
• Selected cross. One picked male on one or a few chosen females, every other plant else removed. The seeds carry the qualities of two selected plants and show narrower variation than the parent pack. Repeated over several rounds with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is made.

All three need only a isolated space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and patience. None of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making does.

Landraces and Heirloom Lines

A number of lines have never feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis grew for centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed because the breeders keeping them treat diversity as the whole point, and reversing a single plant would erase exactly what makes the line worth keeping.

Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from growing a modern hybrid. Expect wide variation, extended flowering periods in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and qualities that made sense in a field but not in a tent. Expect too aromas and chemistry that no longer appear in the commercial market at all. 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 grown out since the original collection.

Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds

None of the above turns regular seed the right choice for everyone, and claiming otherwise does the category no favours.

A grower with space for a handful of plants who needs every one of them to flower is far better off with feminized seed. The same is anyone who cannot afford to inspect the plants every day during the onset of flower, because a missed male in a confined space seeds the whole crop inside days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a population they cannot choose from. And a buyer who is after a known clone-only cut reproduced as closely as possible is better off 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 make something of their own; for everyone else the back shelf is best ignored where it is.

Before You Buy

Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in plain parcels with the original packs intact inside and nothing on the exterior to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, as seed import is not permitted there. Seed law differs sharply by country: in a good number of places buying seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed 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.