In recent years regular seeds have been almost forgotten as growers have shifted to feminized strains. However, for those who are passionate about breeding their own variations on marijuana, it’s still vital to keep some regular seeds around.
For one thing, male plants produced by regular seeds are less prone to becoming hermaphrodites when stressed through techniques like topping, fimming or defoliation.
Unaltered Genetics
For cannabis growers, genetics are everything. The genes in the plants dictate the plant’s stability, yield, harvest quality, and psychoactive effects.
Growing regular seeds means you could end up with either male or female plants, as they can be pollinated by another male or a hermaphrodite (plants that produce both male and female flowers). It was the standard way of growing marijuana before feminized seeds were invented. Luckily for you, we carry a wide variety of both feminized and regular seeds from the finest 1980’s genetics!
Having both male and female plants also allows for breeding. Breeders can stress a plant with the hope of forcing it to develop male sex features, then cross it with another strain in order to create new hybrids. This is a common practice in all agricultural crops, and one that is still used by marijuana breeders today.
Affordability
Generally speaking, regular seeds are much cheaper to produce than feminized or autoflowering varieties. This makes them more affordable to buy. While growers must still cull a number of male plants (which they then throw away), this is a minor expense for many who enjoy cultivating their own strains.
Regular seeds also provide a more stable genetic structure than feminized strains. This is because feminized seeds require that the phenotype of a particular female plant be reverse pollinated with its male counterpart in order to create 100% female specimens. This process can cause the phenotype to become slightly altered over time.
As a result, many breeders prefer to use regular seeds when creating new cultivars. This allows them to maintain the original genetics of their strains over several generations. Ultimately, this can lead to unique and potent strains that haven’t been seen before. Often, these unique strains can be made into clones by growers for future grows.
Pollination Issues
As with any plant, regular seeds can be either male or female. When growing them, growers must be vigilant to ensure that any male plants are eliminated before they pollinate the female cultivars. Keeping male plants out of the mix allows the females to spend all of their energy and resources on developing robust buds, leading to higher yields.
On average, about half of a pack of 10 regular seeds will produce male plants, and that can be frustrating for growers who want to do breeding projects or create their own strains from scratch. As a result, feminized seeds have become increasingly popular and are more widely available than regular seeds.
Outcross-pollination is also beneficial for producers of cotton and sesame because it increases the amount of seed produced by the female plants, boosting overall yields. This is why some growers choose to grow regular seeds alongside feminized varieties. This way, they can harvest their crops when they want without the worry of having to wait until all the male plants have gone to seed.
Genetic Diversity
In a broad context, plant conservationists seek to maximise genetic diversity in seed collections to support adaptive evolution in the long term. This also contributes to overcoming inbreeding depression and ensuring reproductive success in self-incompatible species [1, 2, 3].
The value of genetic diversity is often associated with its ability to mitigate the impact of life-history trade-offs between different traits. However, this depends on the life-history strategy that underpins the trait in question and is not always evident.
The extent to which a particular sampling strategy captures genetic variation is strongly influenced by mating system structure (e.g., a predominantly selfing or biparentally inbreeding mating system increases within-site genetic distances and FIS compared to an outcrossing or mixed mating system). Our results showed that capturing genetic diversity was generally improved by sampling more than one maternal line (within-site average pairwise genetic distance) with the exception of H. sericea sites PT and SP (Table S1). This suggests that the extent to which genetic diversity is captured in seedling subsamples is strongly dependent on the mating system employed.
