Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced lower than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a dwindling group of people who understand exactly what they are after. It is easy to read that as obsolescence. It is nearer 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 survives at all exists only because somebody kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry 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 contributes, what a buyer gives up by never growing one, and how to get value with a population instead of a copy.

What a Male Plant Is Actually For

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 care as the female.

A male contributes structure, hybrid vigour, maturation speed, resistance to mould and pests, trichome production and the terpene chemistry just as the female does; it simply shows some of those qualities less because it never grows a finished flower. Breeders who breed with regular seed invest as much time choosing males as females, which is the work that a feminized cross borrows and can never replicate. Reversing a female yields pollen; it cannot give a second set of selected traits.

How Diversity Leaks Away

A great deal of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Each generation of that selfing cuts in half the remaining genetic variation, and after two generations what is left is close to 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 faults surface: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the original line but absent in the chosen clone disappear out of the population entirely. A decade of this produces a market crowded with versions of a dozen plants, and a anyone wanting to make something different finds there is nothing left to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that refills the market, and that reservoir only exists as long as people keep growing it.

How to Judge a Male

Articles on choosing females are everywhere; advice on picking males is rare, since most growers do not keep one long enough to judge. For a grower making seed, the following are the marks breeders watch for.

• Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its flower parts and a strong aroma suggests it holds the terpene genes worth passing on.
• Timing. A male that declares sex first and flowers in step with the females is more workable than an early one that releases pollen before the female is ready.
• Structure. Tight internodes, a strong central stem and a frame that resembles the desired female habit are inherited; a lanky, floppy male hands that on too.
• Stability. Any male that at the same time forms female pistils under ordinary stress is rejected without exception; the tendency is the one thing worth breeding into a line.
• Restraint. Plants that dump enormous amounts of pollen all at once are often also the less desirable genetically; breeders favour steady shedders.

Thinking in Numbers

The error new regular-seed buyers make is seeing 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 value of growing it is to see the range and choose from it.

About half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to compare and five males to discard or assess for breeding. Within the females, expect real differences: stature, flowering time, smell, density, tolerance. This variation is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who takes cuttings from the best female and male has something a feminized pack cannot offer: a line of chosen parents which are theirs.

Three Ways to Cross

Owning chosen parents means producing the next batch, and here the choices open up. Three methods account for most of what home breeders do.

• Selected cross. One chosen male on one or a few picked females, every other plant else culled. The offspring carry the traits of two specific plants and express less spread than the parent pack. Repeated over generations with consistent selection, this is how a stable line is built.
• Open pollination. Let every male reach each female. It preserves the full diversity of the line, produces a large quantity of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how traditional lines are maintained going, and it is the correct method when the aim is preservation rather than refinement.
• Backcross. Take a selected offspring again to one of its original parents to fix a particular trait. It tightens the genetics quickly and is used when one parent shows something worth concentrating and the other contributed mostly vigour.

Each of these require nothing more than a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. None of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making requires.

Landraces and Heirloom Lines

Some lines have never feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from places where cannabis grew over centuries, and old hybrids from the first decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed since the breeders maintaining them treat the population as the whole point, and reversing a single clone would destroy precisely what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.

Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a commercial hybrid. There will be large variation, extended flowering periods in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and traits that make sense in a mountain valley but not in a tent. Expect also flavours and effects that no longer appear in the commercial market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds holds a separate landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its origin of origin and the number of generations it has been reproduced from the original collection.

Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds

None of the above makes regular seed the right choice for everyone, and claiming otherwise does the product no service.

A grower with space for three plants who wants every one of them to finish is better off with feminized seed. So is a grower who cannot afford to inspect the plants every day during the start of flower, since a missed male in a confined space seeds the whole crop within days. Someone running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a pack they cannot choose from. And a buyer who is after a known famous cut reproduced exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to choose, to keep and eventually to make something new; for anyone else the back shelf is safely ignored alone.

Practicalities

Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in unmarked parcels with the original packs sealed inside and no on the outside to indicate the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, because seed import is restricted 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 permitted under licence or both is. Checking the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and no part of this article should be read as legal advice.