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 bought by a shrinking number of people who know exactly what they are after. It is tempting to read that as obsolescence. It is closer to the truth to read it as a library shrinking while the paperback rack next door expands. Every female-only line began as a regular one, each new cross requires a male somewhere in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists because somebody kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers 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 sets out the case for that half-male pack: what the male is for, what a buyer gives up by not seeing one, and how to work with a pack rather than a clone.

Not Just Pollen

The easy account 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 that half is chosen with the same attention as the female.

A male passes on growth habit, hybrid vigour, maturation speed, tolerance to mould and pests, trichome density and the terpene chemistry just as the female does; it just shows several of those qualities less visibly since it does not grows a smokable flower. Breeders who work with regular seed spend at least as much time choosing males as females, which is the effort that a feminized line borrows and cannot replicate. Reversing a female yields pollen; it cannot provide a different set of selected traits.

What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed

A great deal of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, reversed and crossed with itself. Each generation of that selfing halves the surviving genetic diversity, and after a couple of rounds what remains is essentially one plant expressed in slightly different ways.

That is fine for a consumer who wants that single plant. It is a loss for everyone who comes after. Hidden weaknesses surface: intersex tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Qualities that existed in the parent line but absent in the selected clone vanish out of the gene pool altogether. A generation of this produces a market full with variations of a dozen plants, and a anyone trying to make something new discovers there is nothing left to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the pool, and that reservoir can only persist as long as somebody grows it.

How to Judge a Male

Guides on choosing females are easy to find; guidance on choosing males is rare, because most people never keep one long enough to judge. For anyone making seed, these are the signs breeders look for.

• Structure. Tight internodes, a strong central stem and a frame that matches the desired female shape are inherited; a lanky, floppy male hands that down too.
• Restraint. Plants that release huge amounts of pollen early are often the least selected in other respects; many breeders favour steady shedders.
• Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a pollen cluster and smell it. A male with trichomes on its flower parts and a strong aroma suggests it carries the resin genes that are worth passing on.
• Timing. A male that declares sex first and matures in step with the females is more workable than a very early one that sheds pollen before any female is receptive.

Thinking in Numbers

A mistake first-time regular-seed growers make is seeing a pack as 10 attempts 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 running it is to see the range and choose from it.

Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives something like five females to compare and five males to discard or judge for breeding. Among the females, expect real differences: stature, flowering time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. That spread is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who takes cuttings from the best female and male now owns something a feminized pack can never offer: a pair of selected parents that are their own.

From One Pack to the Next

Owning chosen parents is only worth something if producing the next batch, and here the options multiply. The main methods account for most of what home breeders attempt.

• Open pollination. Allow every male pollinate each female. It keeps the whole range of the line, makes a large volume of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how traditional lines are kept alive, and it is the right method when the goal is preservation not improvement.
• Selected cross. One chosen male on one or several chosen females, every other plant else culled. The offspring carry the qualities of the two selected plants and show narrower variation than the parent pack. Done over several rounds with stable choices, this is how a stable line is built.
• Backcross. Cross a selected offspring back to one of its parents to lock in a particular quality. It tightens the range quickly and is useful when one parent shows something worth keeping and the second contributed mainly vigour.

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

Keeping Old Lines Alive

Some lines were never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis was grown over centuries, and old crosses from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the breeders keeping them regard the population as the whole value, and reversing a single clone would erase precisely what makes the line worth preserving.

Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a modern hybrid. Expect wide variation, extended flowering times in tropical lines, lanky plants, and qualities that make sense in a mountain valley but not in a tent. Expect too aromas and effects that do not appear in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line marked with its origin of origin and the generation it has been grown out since the first collection.

The Honest Exclusions

Nothing of the above makes regular seed the best choice for everyone, and claiming otherwise would the product no service.

A grower with room for three plants who needs each one of them to finish is far better off with feminized seed. The same is anyone who cannot afford to check the plants every day during the start of flower, because a missed male in a confined space seeds everything within days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a population they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a specific clone-only plant repeated 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 keep and eventually to produce something new; for anyone else the back shelf is safely left where it is.

Ordering and the Law

Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in plain packaging with the breeder’s packs intact inside and nothing on the exterior to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed importation is restricted there. Seed law differs widely by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others the two are permitted under local rules or neither is. Checking the position where you live is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article is legal advice.