What Disappears When Every Seed Is Female

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 picked up by a dwindling group of people who understand exactly what they are after. It is tempting to see that as the end of a technology. It is closer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the bookshop next door expands. Every female-only line began as a regular one, each new cross requires a male somewhere in its pedigree, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all survives only because someone kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines that trace to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article makes the case for that half-male pack: what the male contributes, what a buyer gives up by not growing one, and how to work with a pack instead of a copy.

Not Just Pollen

The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is « a pollen source », and to a flower grower that is the whole of it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and that half is selected with the same care as the mother.

A male contributes growth habit, hybrid vigour, flowering speed, resistance to mould and pests, resin density and the aromatic chemistry exactly as the female does; it just shows several of those traits less since it does not produce a finished flower. Those who work with regular seed invest as much time choosing males as females, and this is the work that a feminized cross inherits and can never repeat. Reversing a female gives pollen; it does not provide a second line of selected genes.

The Narrowing

Much of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a single popular clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Every round of that process cuts in half the surviving genetic variation, and after a couple of rounds what is left is close to one plant expressed in slightly different ways.

This is acceptable for a consumer who needs that single plant. It is a loss for everyone downstream. Hidden faults emerge: intersex tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to a particular mould. Qualities that were present in the original line but absent in the chosen clone vanish from the population altogether. A decade of this produces a market crowded with versions of the same few plants, and a breeder wanting to make something different finds there is little left to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the pool, and it only persist if somebody keep growing it.

Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About

Guides on selecting females are easy to find; guidance on picking males is rare, since most growers never keep one past the first week of flower to look. For a grower making seed, these are the signs breeders look for.

• Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its sepals and a clear aroma indicates it holds the terpene genes worth keeping.
• Structure. Short internodes, a thick main stem and a frame that resembles the desired female shape are inherited; a lanky, weak-stemmed male hands that on too.
• Timing. A male that shows sex first and flowers in step with the females is far more workable than an early one that sheds pollen before any female is ready.
• Restraint. Males that release enormous amounts of pollen all at once are frequently the least selected in other respects; breeders prefer steady shedders.

Thinking in Numbers

A mistake new regular-seed buyers fall into 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 slice of a population, and the point of running it is to observe the spread and select 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 cull or assess for breeding. Among the females, look for real differences: stature, finishing time, aroma, density, resistance. This spread is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who takes cuttings from the best female and the best male has something a feminized pack cannot offer: a line of chosen parents which are their own.

Three Ways to Cross

Holding selected parents means producing the next generation, and here the options multiply. The main methods account for most of what small-scale breeders attempt.

• Backcross. Cross a selected offspring again to one of its original parents to lock in a specific quality. It narrows the range fast and is used when one plant has something worth concentrating and the second contributed mostly vigour.
• Open pollination. Let each male reach every female. It keeps the full diversity of the line, produces a large quantity of seed, and involves no selection at all. This is how traditional lines are kept going, and it is the right method when the aim is preservation not refinement.
• Selected cross. One chosen male to one or several picked females, every other plant else culled. The seeds inherit the qualities of the two specific plants and show narrower spread than the parent pack. Done over generations with consistent selection, this is how a new line is made.

Each of these require nothing more than a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and a few weeks. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized seed-making requires.

Keeping Old Lines Alive

Some lines have never been feminized and likely never will be: landraces collected from places where cannabis grew for centuries, and old crosses from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed since the breeders maintaining them treat diversity as the whole value, and selfing a single clone would destroy exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.

Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from running a commercial hybrid. There will be large variation, extended flowering periods in equatorial lines, tall plants, and qualities that make sense in a field but not in a small room. Expect also flavours and chemistry 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 region of collection and the number of generations it has been grown out since the original collection.

When the Library Is the Wrong Shop

None of the above turns regular seed into the best option for everyone, and claiming that it is does the product no service.

A grower with room for three plants who needs each one of them to flower is better off with feminized seed. The same is a grower unable to check the plants every day around the onset of flower, since a late male in a small space seeds the whole crop inside days. Someone growing a single autoflower on a balcony has no use from a pack they cannot select from. And a buyer who wants a specific famous cut reproduced exactly is better off looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to select, to keep and eventually to make something new; for everyone else the back shelf is safely left where it is.

Practicalities

Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches each order in unmarked parcels with the breeder’s packs sealed inside and no on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not accepted, as seed import is restricted there. Seed law differs widely by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is legal as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others both are allowed under licence or both is. Checking the position in your own jurisdiction is the buyer’s responsibility, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.