Light needs for autoflower plants

I run about 700 PPFD for 18 hours light. I provide about 600 PPFD for 20 hours of light. My only auto to herm occurred when I was testing higher light intensity. I do not know if the stronger light triggered the hermaphrodite. 1 plant did really, really well setting my personal auto harvest record. The one that hermed also had really big, fat & juicy buds but I did not let it finish.

oh, and dont just do 10,000ppfd for a 1/23 cycle cause your plants will melt regardless of recovery period, base it on 18hrs light minimum 🤣

This really depends on how many hours you want to run your lights. Ppfd started off based in photos in flower on a 12 hour light cycle. With autos you would generally want to run the lihts for 18, 20 or even 24 hours a day, based on these principals it is better to base your ppfd on providing a peak DLI. A general rule of thumb is to provide at 36-40DLI for good to max yields on plants that are not CO2 assisted, (apparently) 'studies' have shown that above 40DLI you tend to get diminishing returns and from 40 to 50DLI the increase doesnt provide as much as the increase from 30 to 40DLI and too high DLI can risk stressing plants. To calculate DLI from ppfd you need to run through quite a weird formula and approximate conversions and maths that my tiny mind cant comprehend so follow the link coming up: https://www.waveformlighting.com/horticulture/daily-light-integral-dli-calculator Think how many hrs per day you wanna run your light and then calculate ppfd based on that while aiming 30-40DLI. Thay said, always pay attention to the plant and reduce DLI if it looks stressed and be gentle to seedlings.