So I'm having this thought/question. If you could stretch trichome ripening, would that result in more yield? Feel that's an obvious yes.
Sooo!! Would lowering intensity of lights during flip/flower do that???
No. Bugbee was asked this in a recent interview. There's no basis in plant biology to do that and, as he is wont to say, "we don't have any research that supports that."
Light is food to a plant so when you reduce light levels, your plant is not able to make as much glucose and all processes in the plant slow down.
The graphic from growlightmeter.com — it's
not evidence based. I emailed them, asking for citations, and their programmer told me that supporting research would be annotated on the page. Last I checked, there was none on their site. I've read a fair amount of research on cannabis lighting and there's nothing about gradually ramping up light in a step wise fashion like that. By fair amount, I mean I read everything I can find and have spent a few hundred hours at it since I started growing three years ago.
I run my grows, in ambient CO2, at 900-1000µmol±. Below is the light data for my current grow. In veg and early flower, I sample nine points. Once buds develop, I sample the buds (12 sites). All measurements are taken as close to the bud tip as possible using an Apogee MQ-500.
Cannabis is
a light whore loves light. Get your grow squared away, buy a $32 light meter, use it give your plant lots of light, and you'll get a truck load, autos or photos.
Per the attached Frontiers paper, the researchers were able to grow cannabis at light levels up to 1800µmol and, as light levels increased, crop yield and quality increased. I've never been able to run much over 1050.
My light levels from today are here and another set from 3/20/24.
Today
and 3/20/24. There was no visible indication of excess light but I've hit fox tailing at > 1200 so I backed things down a bit.