Regular seed is ideal for growers who want to produce their own seeds. They require more attention, but can produce a high yield when grown well.
They also offer more phenotypes for gardeners to choose from, giving them greater flexibility. Whether you’re looking for extreme potency, unique colours or specific flavours, regular seed can provide the perfect genetic background.
Germination
Seed germination is the process by which a seed sprouts and grows into a mature plant. Seeds are able to germinate when they have sufficient nutrients, water and oxygen to grow.
During germination, seeds rehydrate and the embryo breaks through the seed covering layers. The radicle (primary embryonic root) emerges and the seed grows its first leaves to absorb sunlight.
Using principal component analysis, we tested the effects of germination season on key life history traits, including phenology, morphological characters, silicle production and dry mass accumulation and allocation. Sixteen of 31 autumn- and 55 of 62 spring-germinating plants survived to the four-leaf rosette stage.
Soil
Soil is a complex mixture of minerals, water and air that forms at the Earth’s surface. It consists of different layers or horizons that differ in composition from the underlying parent material due to interactions of climate, relief and living organisms over time.
Soils are not just dirt; they contain bits of organic (carbon-containing) material, the decaying remains of plants and animals. These bits are stored in the soil for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years.
The structure of a soil depends on the percentage of sand, silt and clay particles in it; a soil texture such as loam has equal parts of each. Understanding this and other factors of soil is important to successful gardeners.
Light
The light cycle is an important factor in the growth of seeds. Regular marijuana plants require a certain amount of light each day. This will help them thrive and produce a higher yield.
It is also helpful to keep the temperature at a stable level. This can be done by using a horticultural thermometer and using a time clock to control the lighting schedule.
The benefit of growing regular seeds is that they can grow into either male or female plants. This will save the grower a lot of space and effort. They won’t need to remove 40% of their plants once they have sexed them.
Water
For the gardener looking for a high yield of flowering plants regular seeds are still the way to go. They offer a great deal of genetic diversity and make for excellent mother plants.
Growers who choose to use regular seed have the advantage of being able to identify and remove male cannabis plants at the pre-flowering stage. This reduces the overall amount of work needed to harvest a good crop. They are also less prone to hermaphroditism during the growing process and tend to be stronger than their feminized counterparts. This is why they are favoured by expert growers. They also offer a wider variety of phenotypes for the breeder to select from.
Temperature
The germination process of a seed involves its differentiation into plumule (shoot) and radicle (root part) and cotyledons. This progression is affected by the rate of deterioration which depends on the optimum temperature at which it takes place.
Regular cannabis seeds grow to produce either male or female plants. This can be problematic for the gardener that wants a crop of pure female plants. Often male specimens will pollinate their female counterparts which will reduce their yield.
Temperature influences ABA metabolism in the endosperm. This occurs due to the divergent relationships between mRNA turnover and temperature, the glass transition and endospermic ABA degradation.
Pollination
Pollination is the transfer of pollen grains from the stamens, or anthers, of one flower to the stigma of another. This allows different flowers to exchange genetic information and produce offspring, or seeds.
Once a pollen grain makes it to the stigma, it grows into a tube called a pollen tube that travels down through the style to the ovary. There, it fertilizes an egg cell (or polar cell) inside an ovule. The resulting seed is the next generation of the plant.
Because wind-dispersed pollen has a leptokurtic distribution, seed production is often limited by the availability of pollen (Hesse & Pannell 2011). Fixed effects for ‘pollination treatment’ and ‘breeding system’ were modelled using an R package.
