Regular seeds produce both male and female plants, so growers must carefully monitor their crops and remove any males before they start to flower. This requires a lot of work and can be difficult for new growers.
Many seedbanks have stopped carrying regular seeds, but we feel it’s important to continue to offer this type of seed. There are several reasons why we think this is the case.
Breeding
Regular seeds are essential for growers who love to breed their own strains. They can be used to create hybrids by selecting the best male and female specimens from a crop, then crossing them in order to produce offspring with specific phenotypes. This can be done for a range of reasons including a preference for certain terpenes, high levels of potency or a particular morphology of flowers.
This type of breeding can be difficult and time-consuming, but the rewards are great. By using regular seeds, you can achieve a 50/50 ratio of male to female plants, which is ideal for breeding and creating new cultivars.
Alternatively, growers may choose to use regular seeds in order to produce clones of their favourite specimens. This can be useful for growing a new cultivar in a different location or to get the maximum yield from each plant. Clones produced from regular seeds tend to be stronger than those grown from feminized seeds, as they are not subject to genetic modification.
Cloning
For growers who enjoy breeding their own strains, regular seeds provide a natural proportion of male and female plants. Male plants will eventually produce pollen, which can fertilize female plants and trigger seed production in their budding colas. This can be a problem for gardeners who want to cultivate only females or breed specific traits into their crops.
When taking clones, it is important to choose a healthy and sturdy mother plant that is well into its vegetative cycle. To speed up the rooting process, it is also a good idea to cut clones from multiple nodes on the mother plant.
It is essential to work in a clean and sterile environment when taking clones. It is also a good idea to make sure the mother plant hasn’t been fertilized recently, as this can trick the cuttings into growing vegetation instead of rooting. It is also a good idea to place the clone into a cup of water with some rooting medium to help it get off to a fast start.
Genetic Diversity
Regular seeds grow into both male and female plants, which can be useful in a number of ways. For instance, growers can use the male plants to pollinate the females, producing a new generation of seeds for future grows. The mix of male and female plants also provides genetic diversity for future breeding, allowing for the creation of unique new strains.
As such, it is important to understand how mating systems influence the ability of seed collections to represent the genetic diversity of wild populations. To this end, we analyzed progeny data from six H. sericea and seven H. teretifolia populations, collected using various sampling strategies.
Within-site average pairwise genetic distance matrices (based on Euclidean distances) revealed that seedling subsamples including more maternal lines contained greater genetic diversity than those with fewer mothers (with the exception of two H. sericea sites PT and SP). These results support the notion that mating system variation influences the extent to which wild seed collection practices capture genetic diversity at the species level.
Potency
Using regular seeds can be a great choice for home growers who want to try their hand at breeding. These plants are perfect for creating’mother’ cannabis strains that can produce hundreds of clones over the course of several years.
They are also used for selective breeding as they can develop both male and female plants which can be used to produce new strains with desirable qualities. In addition, they allow for the creation of new phenotypes, which are unique variations of a strain with distinct aromas and effects.
The main reason why most commercial growers prefer feminized seeds is because they offer a more consistent harvest. Feminized plants will only produce female flowers, removing the need for growers to worry about male plants ruining their crop. Additionally, they are easier to manage as they do not require any extra measures like pollination. This helps to reduce the amount of time and effort required to harvest a large crop.
