Why Breeders Still Buy Regular Seeds

Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: shorter every year, marked cheaper than the feminized packs beside it, and picked up by a shrinking number of people who understand exactly what they are looking for. It is tempting to read that as the end of a technology. It is closer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the paperback rack next door grows. Every feminized line began as a regular one, each new cross requires a male somewhere in its history, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all survives only because someone kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines going back to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article makes the argument for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a grower loses by never growing one, and how to get value with a population instead of a copy.

The Other Half of the Genome

The easy description of a male cannabis plant is "the one that makes pollen", and to a flower grower that is all it. For a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and half is selected with the same attention as the female.

A male passes on structure, vigour, flowering speed, tolerance to mould and pests, trichome production and the terpene chemistry exactly as the female does; it simply shows some of those traits less because it never produce a smokable flower. Breeders who work with regular seed spend as much time choosing males as females, and this is the effort that a feminized cross inherits and can never repeat. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it cannot give a second set of selected traits.

The Narrowing

A great deal of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a one famous clone, treated and crossed with itself. Every round of that process halves the surviving genetic diversity, and after two generations what remains is close to one plant repeated in marginally different forms.

This is acceptable for a grower who needs that one plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Recessive weaknesses surface: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Traits that were present in the original line but absent in the chosen clone disappear out of the population entirely. A decade of this leaves a market crowded with versions of the same few clones, and a anyone wanting to create something new finds there is nothing left to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the market, and that reservoir only exists if somebody keep growing it.

Reading a Male Plant

Guides on selecting females are everywhere; guidance on choosing males is scarce, because most people do not keep one long enough to look. For a grower making seed, the following are the signs breeders watch for.

• Resin on the stem. Rub a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its sepals and a strong scent suggests it holds the terpene genes worth passing on.
• Restraint. Plants that dump huge amounts of pollen early are frequently also the least desirable in other respects; many breeders favour steady producers.
• Stability. Any male that also forms female flowers under ordinary conditions is rejected without exception; the trait is the one thing worth carrying forward.
• Timing. A male that shows sex early and matures in step with the females is more workable than an early one that releases pollen before the female is receptive.
• Structure. Short internodes, a strong main stem and branching that matches the intended female shape are inherited; a stretched, floppy male hands that down too.

What 10 Seeds Actually Give You

The mistake 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 sample of a population, and the point of running it is to observe the spread 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 assess for breeding. Within the females, expect noticeable differences: height, finishing time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. That variation is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who keeps the strongest female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack cannot offer: a pair of selected parents which are theirs.

Making Your Own Seed

Owning chosen parents is only worth something if making the next batch, and there the options open up. The main approaches cover most of what small-scale breeders attempt.

• Open pollination. Let each male reach each female. It preserves the whole diversity of the line, makes a large quantity of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how landrace lines are kept alive, and it is the correct approach when the goal is preservation rather than refinement.
• Backcross. Cross a chosen seedling back to one of its parents to lock in a particular quality. It tightens the range quickly and is used when a single parent has something worth keeping and the second contributed mainly vigour.
• Selected cross. One picked male on one or a few picked females, every other plant else culled. The seeds carry the traits of the two selected plants and express less spread than the original pack. Repeated over several rounds with consistent selection, this is how a stable line is made.

Each of these require nothing more than a separate space for the male, a paintbrush or a small bag, and patience. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized production requires.

Landraces and Heirloom Lines

Some lines were never feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis was grown for centuries, and heirloom hybrids from the early decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed since the breeders maintaining them treat diversity as the entire value, and reversing a single plant would destroy exactly what makes the line worth keeping.

Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from running a modern hybrid. There will be large variation, long flowering periods in tropical lines, tall plants, and traits that made sense in a field but not under a small room. Expect also flavours and chemistry that do not appear in the hybrid market at all. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line labelled with its origin of origin and the generation it has been grown out since the first collection.

Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds

None of the above turns regular seed the best choice for everyone, and pretending that it is would the product no service.

A grower with room for three plants who needs every one of them to finish is better served with feminized seed. So is anyone unable to check the plants each day during the start of flower, because a late male in a small space seeds everything within days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a pack they cannot choose from. And a buyer who is after a specific clone-only plant reproduced exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to select, to hold onto and eventually to make something new; for anyone else the back shelf is best ignored alone.

Practicalities

Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches 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 import is not permitted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in many places owning seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed under local rules or both is. Knowing the rules where you live is the buyer's responsibility, and no part of this article should be read as legal advice.