Half Male, Fully Worth It: Regular Seeds

Browse 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 number of people who understand exactly what they are looking for. It is easy to see 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, every new cross requires a male at some point in its pedigree, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that exists 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 because a pack is meant to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a grower loses by never seeing one, and how to get value with a pack rather than a copy.

Not Just Pollen

The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is “a pollen source”, and for 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 attention as the female.

A male contributes structure, vigour, flowering time, tolerance to mould and pests, resin density and the aromatic chemistry just as the female does; it simply shows several of those qualities less since it never produce a finished flower. Breeders who work with regular seed invest as much time choosing males as females, and this is the effort that a feminized cross borrows and cannot replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a second set of selected traits.

What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed

Much of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, treated and crossed with itself. Every round of that selfing cuts in half the surviving genetic variation, and after a couple of generations what is left is close to one plant repeated across marginally different forms.

This is acceptable for a consumer who wants that single 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 not in the selected clone vanish out of the gene pool entirely. A decade of this produces a market full with variations of a dozen clones, and a anyone trying to make something new finds there is nothing remaining to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the pool, and it only persist as long as people grows it.

Reading a Male Plant

Articles on selecting females are everywhere; guidance on choosing males is scarce, because most growers do not keep one long enough to look. For anyone making seed, the following are the marks breeders look for.

• Timing. A male that declares sex first and matures at the same pace as the females is more workable than an early one that releases pollen before any female is receptive.
• Stability. A male that at the same time forms female pistils under normal conditions is rejected without exception; the tendency is the last thing anyone wants carrying forward.
• Structure. Tight internodes, a thick central stem and a frame that matches the intended female shape are passed on; a stretched, weak-stemmed male hands that down too.
• Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its sepals and a clear aroma indicates it carries the resin genes worth passing on.
• Restraint. Plants that release enormous quantities of pollen all at once are often also the less selected genetically; many breeders favour steady producers.

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 the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the point of running it is to see the spread and choose from it.

Roughly half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds gives around five females to evaluate and five males to either cull or assess for breeding. Within the females, look for real variation: stature, finishing time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. That variation is not a failure 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 supply: a line of selected parents which are theirs.

Making Your Own Seed

Holding selected parents is only worth something if producing the next batch, and there the choices open up. Three methods account for most of what home breeders do.

• Open pollination. Allow each male reach each female. It keeps the full range of the line, produces a generous quantity of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained alive, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation not improvement.
• Backcross. Cross a selected offspring back to one of its original parents to fix a particular quality. It tightens the range quickly and is useful when a single plant has something worth keeping and the other brought mainly vigour.
• Selected cross. One picked male to one or a few picked females, every other plant else removed. The offspring inherit the qualities of two selected plants and show less variation than the parent pack. Done over generations with consistent selection, this is how a stable line is made.

Each of these need nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a paintbrush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized production does.

Keeping Old Lines Alive

A number of lines have never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from places where cannabis grew over centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed since the people maintaining them treat diversity as the entire value, and reversing a single clone would destroy precisely what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.

Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from growing a commercial hybrid. Expect large variation, extended flowering times in tropical lines, tall plants, and qualities that make sense in a field but not in a small room. There will be also flavours and effects that no longer exist in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its origin of collection and the number of generations it has been reproduced from the first collection.

When the Library Is the Wrong Shop

Nothing of the above makes regular seed into the best choice for everyone, and pretending that it is would the category no service.

A grower with room for three plants who needs each one of them to flower is better served with feminized seed. So is a grower who cannot afford to inspect the plants every day during the onset of flower, because a late male in a small space ruins everything within days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a population they cannot select from. And anyone who wants a specific famous cut repeated as closely as possible is looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to keep and eventually to produce something of their own; for everyone else the back shelf is safely ignored where it is.

Before You Buy

Breeder Regular Seeds sends every order in unmarked parcels with the breeder’s packs intact inside and no on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, as seed importation is not permitted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in many places owning seeds is lawful as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under local rules or both is. Checking the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s job, and no part of this article should be read as legal advice.