You can pretend your a expert, bread barbershop, defoliate to hearts content, no matter how you shake it or try and justify it, one thing alllllllllllways remains true.
The cola I can't reach to defoliate, always, always, always, 100% of the time are bigger than ones I defoliate and tell myself I. Doing good.
I just stopped kidding myself after a while.
Plant is way smarter than we are, before a plant detaches a leaf it reallocates mobile nutrients within that leaf. Its Just waste of time and energy and reduces total capacity for photon capture. As soon as a plant detects a leaf is using more resources to stay alive than it produces it will self terminate, turn yellow and fall off.
Just my experience with it.