Pre-Harvest Darkness... Yay or Nay??

mmm the chat pro subscription or whatever whiffed on this UV...... anything photoperiod-wise for a day or few doesnt change overall trends. the only trigger you can touch on that time scale is phytochrome cycles...aka inducing flowering on the hormonal path.... darkness the last few days does nothing to the plant's schedule. i love the reffing like bugbee in these answers but not respecting any of his findings that photoperiods really need time to adjust. just like your circadian rhythm isnt going to swap instantly on your first day of school or the first 3rd shift, neither is the plant gonna give a single crap about what you think youre doing the last 24-48 hours. this is fact, this is known, this is science, this is math, this is botany........... you can watch the plant's medium in hydro over the 24 hour cycle to see the plant not caring about your random last minute changes, if you want. the only thing that you are removing is photon pressure on trichomes, which is also energy from light... the plant is still gonna assume the schedule is +/-1-2% or so from yesterday, still gonna do every single thing it would normally like water and salt transfer..........just without photons. so, in theory, you could have relatively more rfully repaired trichome heads from the starting point of the morning of the would be change......but youre talking about what to optimize once you can grow za remotely honestly

Whether or not you use it is up to you; whether it makes a difference is arbitrary. What matters is that's how it works, that's how it's always worked. It's not the end-all, be-all for a finished product, just another small piece of the puzzle. Understanding autophagic response and how to control them through signalling is a step beyond the recommendation of a "first-time grower." But a critical one for a master grower who truly wants to understand what's going on under the hood, as it is the only way to truly know you are getting the purest, cleanest smoke, understanding nitrogen, its different forms, and how the different forms decay, how they decay, and what mechanisms are used to dispose of the different forms. Controlling plant autophagy and nitrogen decay mechanisms in late-stage cultivation are advanced techniques used by master growers to degrade residual chlorophyll and maximize smoke purity. Managing these internal cellular recycling processes determines the ultimate smoothness and cleanliness of the final cannabis product. The End.

bugbee did some initial testing, if i recall? It didn't cause anything measurable and i think he even said it's probably more likely that giving 'more' light the last few days would have a greater chance of some small insignificant effect... ~2 days won't change the spots on your plant. after ~100 days growing it.

I liked the answer about LLMs recently and will re-use it here... "Fuck all" Bwahaha. Unless someone has a method to competently measure aerial density of trichomes, i just don't buy it. This is something that is hypothesized by the 'culture' but then nobody tests it. That's a major reason why anecodte failed so horribly for 200,000 years of human existence.

Triggers autophagy and dark-induced senescence. Extended dark triggers programmed cell death or PCD, Protein/enzyme synthesis is upregulated, accelerating breakdown of chlorypyl among other things. Just be grateful to make it to harvest. Enzymes drastically lower the activation energy required for chemical reactions. They function similarly to coefficient multipliers, exponentially increasing the reaction rate, not just x1,2,3, talking anywhere up to 10^{17}. Understand that when you cut a stem off to harvest, the stem, similar to a clone cutting, is not clinically dead; it hasn't triggered biological PCD, stem/enters a highly active transition phase where it balances Programmed Cell Death (PCD), and cellular regeneration. Until water levels force its hand, by then it's been 3 days @ 60/60, plant is almost dry, and it's not even begun to breakdown chlorphyl its spent 3 days in regenerative mode, 0 Enzyme release. Sorta how it works. For cell death to be classified as PCD, the cell must remain metabolically active enough to execute its own genetically controlled self-destruction sequence. Can't just hack it off or boil the roots. That's necrosis. One tries to signal the trigger, PCD upregulates the enzyme, then harvest. If you just hack it off, it spends days "hanging", "drying" in "regenerative" mode before PCD is signaled and triggered.

Well, the reason you do it is to signal the plant the end of life, which will lead to more resinproduction. No you could leave them in the growroom and most definetly should not use bags,, as this will most likely lead to mold. I just turn off my lights and thats it.