Regular Seeds: The Archive

Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: smaller every year, marked cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a shrinking group of people who know exactly what they are after. It is tempting to see that as obsolescence. It is nearer to the truth to read it as a library losing shelves while the bookshop next door grows. Every female-only line started as a regular one, each new cross needs a male at some point in its pedigree, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all exists only because someone kept regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines that trace to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article makes the case for that half-male pack: what the male is for, what a buyer loses by never seeing one, and how to work with a population instead of a copy.

Not Just Pollen

The easy account 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 that follows, and half is chosen with the same attention as the mother.

A male passes on structure, vigour, flowering speed, resistance to mould and pests, resin density and the terpene chemistry just as the female does; it simply expresses several of those traits less since it does not grows a finished flower. Those who breed with regular seed spend at least as much time selecting males as females, which is the work that a feminized cross inherits and cannot replicate. Reversing a female yields pollen; it does not 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 single popular clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Each generation of that process cuts in half the surviving genetic diversity, and after a couple of generations what remains is close to one plant repeated in slightly different ways.

That is acceptable for a grower who wants that single plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Hidden weaknesses emerge: intersex tendencies, weak stems, susceptibility to one particular mould. Traits that existed in the parent line but absent in the selected clone vanish from the population altogether. A decade of such breeding produces a market crowded with versions of the same few plants, and a breeder trying to make something different finds there is little left to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the pool, and it only exists if people grows it.

How to Judge a Male

Guides on choosing females are everywhere; advice on picking males is rare, since most growers never keep one past the first week of flower to judge. For a grower producing seed, these are the marks breeders watch for.

• Structure. Short internodes, a strong main stem and branching that resembles the desired female habit are inherited; a lanky, floppy male passes that down too.
• Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its flower parts and a clear aroma indicates it holds the terpene traits that are worth keeping.
• Timing. A male that declares sex first and matures in step with the females is far more workable than a very early one that releases pollen before any female is receptive.
• Stability. A male that at the same time shows female pistils under normal stress is discarded outright; the trait is the one thing anyone wants breeding into a line.

Thinking in Numbers

The error first-time regular-seed growers make is seeing a pack as 10 attempts at the one plant. It is the opposite. 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.

About half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields something like five females to compare and five males to either discard or assess for breeding. Among the females, look for real differences: height, finishing time, aroma, bud structure, resistance. That spread is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is selling. The grower who takes cuttings from the best female and male has something a feminized pack can never offer: a pair of selected parents which are their own.

Three Ways to Cross

Holding selected parents is only worth something if making the next generation, and here the options open up. Three approaches account for most of what home breeders do.

• Backcross. Cross a selected offspring again to one of its parents to fix a particular trait. It narrows the genetics fast and is used when a single plant shows something worth concentrating and the other contributed mostly vigour.
• Open pollination. Allow every male reach every female. It keeps the whole range of the line, makes a generous volume of seed, and does no selection at all. This is how landrace lines are maintained alive, and it is the correct approach when the aim is preservation rather than improvement.
• Selected cross. One chosen male on one or a few chosen females, every other plant else removed. The offspring carry the qualities of the two selected plants and express narrower variation than the parent pack. Repeated over generations with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is made.

All three need nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a paintbrush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. None of them needs the chemical reversal that feminized production does.

Landraces and Heirloom Lines

Some lines have never been feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from places where cannabis was grown for centuries, and heirloom crosses from the first decades of modern breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the people keeping them regard diversity as the whole value, and reversing a single clone would erase exactly what makes the line worth keeping.

Running a landrace from regular seed is different from growing a modern hybrid. There will be wide variation, extended flowering times in tropical lines, tall plants, and qualities that make sense in a mountain valley but not under a tent. Expect also aromas and chemistry that no longer appear in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, with each line marked with its region of origin and the number of generations it has been grown out from the first collection.

The Honest Exclusions

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

A grower with room for three plants who needs each one of them to finish is better served with feminized seed. The same is anyone unable to check the plants each day during the start of flower, since a missed male in a confined space seeds everything inside days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a pack they cannot choose from. And a buyer who is after a specific famous 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 wants to choose, to hold onto and eventually to make something new; for anyone else the back shelf is safely ignored alone.

Ordering and the Law

Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in unmarked parcels with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and no on the outside to indicate 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 allowed under local rules or neither is. Checking the position where you live is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article is legal advice.