Cannabis has been enjoying quite a renaissance in the last several years since recreational marijuana has been made legal in many American States and some other countries in the world. Thanks to these new laws and regulations, consuming marijuana for recreational and medicinal reasons is not looked downed upon as much and it is nowhere near as infamous as it once was.
In such a modern world regarding the cannabis plant and the industry around it, an average consumer no matter if they are a newbie or a pro, has to know a lot about the plant itself and the products derived from it. The most important thing to have in your mind is knowledge regarding the seeds. Two types of seeds exist, regular and feminized, and they are used in different circumstances.
To learn about why the feminized cannabis seeds are so different and why they even exist, make sure to keep reading the article. In case you still want to learn more about this, make sure to visit Royal Queen Seeds where you can also order a ton of different cannabis seeds.
Current State of Affairs
The traditional, regular, and natural way of growing the cannabis plant is just as nature intended it. You can either get a male or a female plant from a seed and you can never really be sure what the outcome will be. However, since the late 1990s, feminized seeds started becoming more sought-after and widely popular because the growers who harvested the buds for smoking preferred the female plants. Therefore, more of them were created and they established themselves on the market as the go-to product for smoking marijuana.
The real boom of the female seeds happened in 1998 and ever since the growers are crazy about them, so much so that rarely anyone is selling traditional seeds anymore. For example, in Europe, about 95% of growers plant, grow, and harvest female plants. However, there are some issues with this, mainly with the cannabis gene pool which has largely been altered thanks to such a wide dominance of the feminized seeds. Regular seeds should also be sold, grown, and consumed so that we can preserve the plant as nature intended.
Why Are They Different?
At the first glance, you cannot really tell what seed is male and what is female. All of them look exactly the same to the naked eye, but inside of them lies the crucial difference. The female ones naturally lack male chromosomes, while the regular seeds have the full array of genetics and can be male or female. The growers who only opt for the feminized variety do not have to identify the which ones are male and remove them to stop pollination.
If you want buds and not the seeds, you do not need male plants, minimizing the work and getting more of the good stuff that is actually used in smoking and other ways of consumption. The whole cultivation process revolves around the buds and not the seeds, which is exactly why anyone who wants to smoke it grows from the female seeds. The female marijuana plants were so prized and easy to gather that they were often used to grow for medicinal purposes. Looking at all the benefits of the feminized seeds, you can easily rely on them for their potential. You can buy the best quality female marijuana seeds from SeedSupreme.
Do We Need Regular Seeds?
As mentioned above, we do need them if we are to preserve the natural state of the plant. There will always be the need for male plants in order to have more plants in general. On the other hand, those looking for profit in their growing, harvesting, and selling businesses will mostly plant the feminized variety as it makes more sense. Still, we need regular seeds for such processes as breeding and cloning.
Since the first days of agriculture, crossing multiple cultivars among them has been present with all sorts of plants. Picking and choosing what you need and increasing the yield is necessary, and for that you need regular seeds that can become both male and female. This is especially important in the experimentation stages when the experts are still learning and examining the potential strains.
Cloning, on the other hand, used to be the most common practice of producing cannabis plant crops without too many males in the mix. It was used to produce plants that have full chromosome sets and all the good sides that come with it. For this reason, regular seeds will always have a place on plantations and in shops.
What Does It Mean for the Consumer?
For those among you who are cannabis enthusiasts, the gender of the seed your product comes form is not that important. All that you need to know is that it does not matter where the female plant comes from. No matter if it comes from regular or feminized seeds, from cloning or regular breeding and growing.
Unless the product you get does not specifically mention an elite clone as the parent and general origin tested and proven as the best smoking weed, you will not really feel the difference. This would be the only true advantage, albeit a great one, of feminized strains, but only the top-tier and most expensive ones. Other positives are mostly for the growers and do not matter at all to the consumer.
Summation
To summarize what we learned in the article, pay close attention to the following side by side comparison:
1. Feminized seeds are usually elite clones, while regular are pure genetics at work
2. Grow only what you need, however much that is, versus creating new seeds all the time
3. Save resources and effort and use chemicals, or follow the natural process
Other than this, everything else is largely the same and not important for consumers. The quality will always depend on the genetics, and a bad plant can never give a quality offspring no matter if it is regular seeds and natural growing or feminized seeds and cloning.
As a cannabis enthusiast who has their own favorite strains and products, you should pick and choose what you like the most. As a grower who has a business to run, it is true that doing work with female seeds is easier and more convenient especially for smoking, but make sure to plant regular seeds from time to time to satisfy the gene pool and preserve the natural order of things.
