Half Male, Fully Worth It: Regular Seeds

Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: smaller every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs next to 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, every new cross requires a male at some point in its pedigree, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists only because somebody kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines that trace to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is meant to be a population, not a single plant. This article makes the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a buyer gives up by never seeing one, and how to work with a pack instead of a copy.

The Other Half of the Genome

The easy account of a male cannabis plant is „the one that makes pollen“, and to a flower grower that is the whole of it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and half is chosen with the same attention as the mother.

A male contributes structure, vigour, flowering speed, resistance to mould and pests, resin production and the aromatic chemistry just as the female does; it simply shows several of those traits less visibly because it never grows a smokable flower. Those who work with regular seed invest as much time choosing males as females, which is the effort that a feminized line inherits and can never replicate. Reversing a female gives pollen; it does not give a second line of selected traits.

The Narrowing

A great deal of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a single famous clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Each round of that selfing cuts in half the surviving genetic variation, and after two rounds what is left is essentially one plant repeated in slightly different forms.

This is fine for a consumer who needs that one plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Hidden weaknesses surface: intersex tendencies, weak stems, susceptibility to a particular mould. Traits that were present in the parent line but not in the selected clone disappear out of the population entirely. A generation of such breeding leaves a market full with versions of the same few plants, and a anyone wanting to make something different finds there is little left to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the pool, and that reservoir can only exists as long as somebody keep growing it.

Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About

Articles on selecting females are everywhere; advice on picking males is scarce, because most people do not keep one long enough to look. For a grower producing seed, the following are the signs breeders look for.

• Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its sepals and a strong scent indicates it holds the resin genes that are worth keeping.
• Timing. A male that declares sex early and flowers at the same pace as the females is more useful than an early one that releases pollen before the female is ready.
• Stability. A male that also forms female pistils under normal conditions is rejected without exception; that tendency is the one thing anyone wants carrying into a line.
• Structure. Tight internodes, a thick central stem and a frame that resembles the desired female habit are passed on; a lanky, weak-stemmed male hands that on too.
• Restraint. Plants that release enormous quantities of pollen early are frequently also the least desirable in other respects; breeders favour steady producers.

What 10 Seeds Actually Give You

A mistake first-time regular-seed buyers fall into 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 sample of a population, and the value of running it is to observe the range and select from it.

Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives around five females to compare and five males to either cull or judge for breeding. Within the females, expect real variation: height, finishing time, aroma, density, resistance. That variation is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who keeps the best female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack cannot offer: a pair of chosen parents which are theirs.

Three Ways to Cross

Holding selected parents is only worth something if producing the next generation, and here the options open up. Three methods account for most of what small-scale breeders do.

• Selected cross. One chosen male to one or a few picked females, everything else removed. The offspring inherit the qualities of the two specific plants and show less variation than the original pack. Done over several rounds with stable choices, this is how a new line is made.
• Backcross. Take a chosen offspring again to one of its original parents to fix a specific trait. It tightens the range fast and is used when a single parent shows something worth keeping and the second contributed mostly vigour.
• Open pollination. Let every male reach every female. It keeps the full diversity of the line, makes a generous quantity of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are kept going, and it is the correct method when the goal is preservation rather than improvement.

All three require only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a small bag, and patience. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making requires.

Landraces and Heirloom Lines

Some lines were never feminized and likely never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis was grown for centuries, and old crosses from the early decades of modern breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the people maintaining them regard the population as the whole point, and reversing a single plant would destroy exactly what makes the line worth preserving.

Running a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a commercial hybrid. There will be large variation, long flowering times in equatorial lines, tall plants, and traits that make sense in a mountain valley but not in a tent. There will be also aromas and effects that do not exist in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line marked with its region of collection and the generation it has been grown out from the first collection.

The Honest Exclusions

Nothing of the above makes regular seed into the best option for everyone, and claiming that it is would the category no favours.

A grower with space for three plants who needs every one of them to flower is far better served with feminized seed. The same is anyone unable to check the plants each day around the start of flower, since a missed male in a small space ruins everything inside days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a pack they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a specific clone-only plant repeated exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to select, to keep and at some point to produce something of their own; for anyone else the back shelf is best left alone.

Practicalities

Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches each order in unmarked packaging with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and nothing on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, as seed import is restricted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in many places buying seeds is legal as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under local rules or neither is. Knowing the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and no part of this article is legal advice.