As the name suggests, regular seeds produce both male and female plants. They’re more unpredictable than feminized seeds and require care from the grower to eliminate male plants before they pollinate other plants.
Regular seeds are essential for breeding new cannabis strains. They enable cultivators to create specimens that display their desired traits, such as increased potency or greater yield.
Breeding
While feminized seeds are ideal for growers who want to produce a crop of only female plants, regular seeds can still produce male plants. These male plants can pollinate your entire crop, resulting in a lower yield and less quality. Regular seeds are more expensive than feminized seeds, but they offer the flexibility of producing a crop with a mix of male and female plants.
Seeds can be bred using either the LND or GDD methods. Both methods require a synchronization between the parental plants. To ensure that the plant’s sex is determined, staggered seeding should be used on the R line, and the earlier-developing parent should be fed with quick-releasing nitrogen fertilizer (2% urea). The flowering site should also be free from rain for 10 days during peak flowering.
The highest MGT values for EA and GSL were observed in genotypes with the allele T at Bn-A01-p26914512. However, these results cannot be interpreted as direct genetic effects on germination performance or seed quality.
Cloning
As the name suggests, cloning is the process of taking cuttings from your current plants to create an exact genetic copy. This can be a blessing or a curse, but the benefits are considerable:
Growers can skip the seed germination and seedling stage when working with clones, making them a little faster to get into the ground. However, they need to be careful as clones are delicate and may die if handled too roughly or aren’t given a proper start in life.
Clones also have the added advantage of being guaranteed to be female, unlike regular seeds which often produce a mixed batch of male and female plants. Unfortunately, clones will still carry flaws that their mother plant may have, including hidden genes for disease or pest vulnerability. These issues can cause problems months down the line during flowering, when these genetic weaknesses can manifest themselves as disease or pests in your garden. Thankfully, high-quality feminized seeds are available, which eliminate this risk completely.
Organic
Organic production emphasizes preventative on-farm practices that limit the need for external chemical inputs, such as crop rotation, techniques to build soil organic matter, weed management and disease scouting. Organic growers are encouraged to save their own seed for crops that produce more than a few seeds, such as tomatoes, peas and beans. They use good sanitation, visually different varieties and other systems to maintain separation between organic and conventional cropping and animal production.
A structural equation model suggests that farmers’ perceived conditions and social norms are the strongest influences on organic seed use. Organic seed use is higher on farms that sell directly to consumers, but lower on those that sell to supermarkets and among smaller farms. Within the European regions, it is significantly higher in Northern and Central Europe than in Southern Europe. The effect of PO is also significant, with a higher use of organic seed in the vegetable sector than in the fruit sector.
Security
Seed systems have the ability to adapt and transform with change. This is especially important for farmers whose production is dependent on rain and often subject to rapid, wide-scale climate change.
As a result, farmers’ seed systems are complex and highly context specific. They are a mix of formal seed sector operations and local informal or farmers’ seed systems that operate within their communities. The latter may also incorporate scientifically bred varieties from the formal sector into their seeds through natural crosses or admixture.
Regular seeds operate exactly how nature intended – about half of them will grow to become male plants, allowing breeders to create new cultivars and produce better-quality clones. Because of this, they are prized by experienced growers who enjoy cooking up unique crossbreeds and strains from scratch. In addition, they offer more genetic variation than feminized seeds, which are created by chemically altering the chromosomes of a preferred female plant phenotype.
