Brix levels, do they matter? What raises the Brix level? 🔥

I’m quite new to scientific research but I do scientific research on cannabis plants. I mean quantitative scientific research that considers experimental design and statistical analysis. Also, am familiar with plant ecophysiology. Hopefully, my comments can clear a few things.

So few facts about plant physiology or ecophysiology.
Unnecessarily high brix most likely means your plant assimilates balance is off or has a higher chance to be off soon.
That means your plants are susceptible to pests and diseases for instance. Of course, there can be an ideal range where you’ll get more sugar production without problems but it doesn’t mean your plants are healthy. It means your plants are strong. Just that the healthiest plants are balanced plants, not necessarily stronger plants.

Indeed, healthy plants often indicate better bud (flower development) but a healthy plant doesn’t mean your cannabinoid and terpene production will be higher. It’s more likely the other way around since especially, cannabinoids function as a part of defensive mechanisms so a stress response.

Sugar production in plants has nothing to do with microbes.
Well, yes, plant interacts with microbes and often plant sap that has glucose in it, is involved in this interaction. However, it has nothing to do with plants making sugar. Also, less meaningful amounts of sugars are used to interact with microbes.

Another thing, I want to emphasize is that the majority of nutrients are fed to plants via plant water uptake, above 85% of all the nutrient uptake that plants do during the life cycle.
Please don’t think plants select what nutrients to uptake every time. That scenario is an extremely minor case.

Back to sugar again, if you want to know if your plants are having excessive sugars, look for the stem/petiole colours. If purpling, that will indicate a trend that your plants are getting excessive sugar probably either because of starch accumulation or anthocyanin accumulation. Both starch accumulation and anthocyanin accumulation often mean excessive photosynthesis compared to respiration. This way you can assume that your plants have relatively higher sugar than under ordinary conditions.

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