Regular seed is seed from a female pollinated by a real male. Each seed inherits an X from the mother and either an X or a Y from the father, so the crop comes out close to 50:50 female to male.
In practice
For flower-only growers, regulars mean more seeds to start and males to identify and remove before they shed pollen, typically when the first flowers show at the nodes or earlier with a DNA sex test. For breeders, regulars are the raw material. They contain males, and males carry half the genetics of the next generation. A selected male is how traits are combined, lines are stabilised, and diversity is kept.
Many breeders and preservationists prefer regular seed for these reasons. Lines bred only through feminising skip male selection entirely.
Expect the ratio to vary in small batches. Ten seeds might give three or seven females by chance.
Don't confuse with
- Feminised seed: female × reversed female; nearly all females.
- Bagseed: seed found in purchased flower; often from an accidental pollination of unknown origin.
- Landrace seed: usually regular, but "regular" says nothing about origin.
Myth check
House position: males are a necessity in breeding and are encouraged and rewarded on GenetixBay. Regular seed is not "old-fashioned"; it is how breeding works.
Pollination is the transfer of pollen onto a female flower's stigmas; in cannabis it is usually by wind, or by hand when breeders pollinate chosen branches to make seed.Regs is slang for regular seed: seed from a true male and female cross that gives roughly half male and half female plants.Stabilisation is breeding a seed line over several generations, with selection each time, until it reliably reproduces the chosen traits from seed.Male selection is the choice of which male plants become parents, judged by their vigour, structure, early aroma and above all by the quality of their offspring.Feminised seed is seed made by pollinating a female with pollen from another female (or itself) that was chemically reversed, so nearly every seed grows into a female.Sex reversal is chemically inducing a genetically female cannabis plant to grow fertile male flowers, so its pollen can make feminised seed; silver thiosulfate is the standard agent.Bagseed is a seed found in purchased flower, of unknown parentage and often the product of accidental pollination, including by intersex plants.A landrace is a traditional, locally adapted cannabis population kept by farmers in one region over many generations, with its own type and plenty of internal variation.Cannabis uses an XY sex determination system: females carry two X chromosomes (XX) and males an X and a Y (XY), so regular seed is roughly half male.A cross is the offspring of mating two different plants, written female x male, as "A x B"; one cross starts a line but is not one.F1 is the first generation of offspring from crossing two parents; if the parents are inbred and different, F1 plants are uniform and often show hybrid vigour.
