In a grow room, it’s important that the ratio of female to male plants is balanced. This is achieved by growing regular seed.
Seeds are germinated in a medium such as potting soil that is free of nematodes, insects, and other disease organisms. The medium should also be fine, uniform, and loose and well-aerated.
Stability
Regular seed is produced by brushing pollen from male plants against female plants. This will cause fertilisation and seeds to begin to form. The process is then repeated to produce more seeds. As such, it can take quite a while to produce a full batch of regular seeds.
While feminized seeds are more reliable, regular seeds can be used to produce a variety of different phenotypes. This is important for those that wish to create their own unique strains.
Many growers prefer to use regular seeds because of the genetic stability they offer. They also have a lower cost than feminized seeds. However, growing regular seeds does require a little more work as you’ll need to separate the males from the females. This can take up to 50% of your growing space and can result in a lower yield per crop. It is also not recommended for beginner growers as it can be a bit tricky to identify and remove the males from the females.
Genetics
Many old school strains were never feminized and still exist today in regular seed form. These seeds are often used to produce new generations of cultivars, as they can be back crossed or bred with the original parent in order to fix traits and improve phenotypes.
Despite the high heritability of both seed size and number, genetic variation explains only a small proportion of total variance for these traits. This is unlike other life-history trade-offs, where correlations between traits are much larger.
The low r2 value for the seed size/number correlation suggests that a single gene may explain a large part of this variation. To identify such a gene, we performed candidate gene analyses in the 200 earliest and latest MAGIC lines for seed size and number. Candidate genes found in these analyses included two with a nonsynonymous substitution unique to Bur-0, and located
Cost
Regular seed is popular amongst seasoned growers who prefer to cultivate a variety of different plants, and for whom the ability to produce heavy yields for multiple harvests is a necessity. When working with regular seed, it is possible to ‘fuse’ strains that have different characteristics, creating new strains of cannabis with a wide range of potency and flavor profiles.
Regular seeds are also cheaper than feminized seeds. However, this advantage is offset by the fact that regular seed has a 50% chance of producing hermaphrodite plants – hermaphrodites are those that produce male flowers.
Sexing regular seeds correctly and at the correct time is a time-consuming and labour intensive process. As a result, many growers choose to plant feminized seeds instead if they require a specific ratio of female to male plants. This is mainly because the plants produced by feminized seed tend to be more resistant to stress, such as topping, fimming, and lollypopping.
Availability
Many growers are under the impression that feminized seeds produce a higher percentage of female plants than regular seed, but this is untrue. Feminized seeds have a 50% chance of going hermaphrodite and producing male flowers, especially when subjected to stress from techniques like topping, fimming, lollypopping, or defoliation. The fact is, most growers end up throwing away half of their weed plants after germination because they are not the desired sex.
Growing with regular seeds is a more natural process that operates how nature intended. Depending on the strain, there is an equal chance of germinating flowering females or pollen-producing males. This is ideal for breeders who want to create a new cultivar, as it offers them the opportunity to work with a large selection of phenos.
In addition, using regular sex seed is much cheaper than buying feminized seeds from the outset. This is because it allows you to use 100% of your growing space, and it also saves money on wasted nutrients and growing medium.