What Disappears When Every Seed Is Female
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 shrinking number of people who understand exactly what they are looking for. It is tempting to see that as the end of a technology. It is closer to the truth to see it as a library losing shelves while the paperback rack next door expands. Every feminized line started as a regular one, every new cross requires a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists because someone held onto regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines going back to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the argument for that half-male pack: what the male is for, what a buyer loses by never seeing one, and how to get value with a population rather than a copy.
The Other Half of the Genome
The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and for a flower grower that is the whole of it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and half is chosen with the same attention as the mother.
A male contributes growth habit, vigour, maturation speed, resistance to mould and pests, resin density and the aromatic profile exactly as the female does; it just shows several of those traits less because it does not grows a smokable flower. Breeders who breed with regular seed invest at least as much time selecting males as females, and this is the work that a feminized line inherits and can never repeat. Reversing a female yields pollen; it does not give a different line of selected genes.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
Much of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, treated and crossed with itself. Every generation of that selfing halves the surviving genetic variation, and after two generations what is left is essentially one plant repeated in marginally different ways.
That is acceptable for a consumer who wants that single plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Recessive faults surface: intersex tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Qualities that were present in the original line but not in the chosen clone vanish from the population entirely. A generation of such breeding leaves a market full with versions of a dozen plants, and a breeder trying to create something different finds there is nothing remaining to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that refills the pool, and it only exists as long as somebody grows it.
Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About
Guides on choosing females are everywhere; guidance on choosing males is scarce, because most people do not keep one long enough to judge. For a grower producing seed, the following are the signs breeders look for.
- Timing. A male that shows sex first 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 at the same time shows female pistils under normal stress is rejected outright; the trait is the last thing anyone wants breeding forward.
- Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with resin on its sepals and a clear scent indicates it holds the resin traits that are worth keeping.
- Restraint. Males that release huge quantities of pollen all at once are often the less desirable genetically; many breeders prefer moderate shedders.
- Structure. Short internodes, a strong main stem and branching that matches the desired female habit are inherited; a stretched, floppy male passes that on too.
Thinking in Numbers
A error first-time regular-seed growers fall into is treating 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 point of growing it is to see the range and select from it.
About half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives something like five females to evaluate and five males to either discard or assess for breeding. Within the females, look for real differences: stature, finishing time, aroma, density, tolerance. That variation is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who takes cuttings from the strongest female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack can never offer: a pair of selected parents which are their own.
Three Ways to Cross
Holding chosen parents means producing the next generation, and there the options open up. The main methods cover most of what small-scale breeders attempt.
- Backcross. Cross a selected offspring again to one of its original parents to fix a particular quality. It tightens the genetics quickly and is useful when a single plant shows something worth keeping and the other contributed mostly vigour.
- Open pollination. Let every male pollinate each female. It preserves the full diversity of the line, makes a generous quantity of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how traditional lines are kept alive, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation not refinement.
- Selected cross. One picked male to one or a few chosen females, everything else removed. The offspring carry the traits of two specific plants and show less variation than the parent pack. Repeated over several rounds with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is built.
All three require nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a soft brush or a small bag, and a few weeks. Not one of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making requires.
Keeping Old Lines Alive
Some lines were never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from places where cannabis grew for centuries, and heirloom crosses from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are available as regular seed because the people maintaining them treat the population as the whole value, and reversing a single clone would erase exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.
Running a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from growing a modern hybrid. There will be wide variation, extended flowering times in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and traits that made sense in a mountain valley but not under a small room. Expect also flavours 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 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 turns regular seed the best option 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 better served with feminized seed. So is anyone who cannot afford to inspect the plants each day around the onset of flower, because a missed male in a confined space ruins the whole crop inside days. A person growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no value from a population they cannot select from. And anyone who wants a specific famous plant repeated exactly is better off 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 anyone else the regular shelf is best ignored where it is.
Before You Buy
Breeder Regular Seeds sends each order in unmarked parcels with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and nothing on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, as seed importation is not permitted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under licence or neither is. Checking the position where you live is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article is legal advice.
