Defoliation possible?

I would say with an auto do not defoliate her at all. With the plant having a predetermined life cycle not like a photo strain any stress you put on her will add possible weeks onto your finish time. Now i'm not going to sit here and say you cant defoliate sometimes you have no choice if you run in to nasty pathogens you need to get rid off and the only way is to remove the infected leaves and allow fresh growth to help her recover. I will never cut a leaf off the only reason I would do so is if a plant is healthy and can cope with it and I need more light penetration in the canopy. When you think about it the plant named Sativa or Cannabis has evolved over 10s of thousands of years and it has evolved to produce her biggest and best flowers in order to attract male pollen and reproduce. So keeping this is mind if she would benefit having her fan leaves cut off. She probably would of evolved to do so. What people talk about channeling energy through the plant is pretty ridiculous and this would mean the plant was aware of which parts had been cut and to distribute nutrients to that specific spot on the plant this would require some sort of brain. which plants simply don't have. Every healthy fan leaf you remove from your plant is taking away all that energy on the surface are of that leaf which could be used to make your buds that much bigger. Also defoliation in the first few weeks of flower is highly advised against and for one reason. The plant is already going through a very dramatic change and she is very busy trying to start to build them flower so I would say stressing them in this time period is just giving them yet more to do which can result in some of the worst cases hermaphrodites even with autos. Though I will never tell you what to do with your own plant its yours do what the hell you like :) Happy growing and best of luck for the finish :)