Have any evidence to back that claim?
Like maybe you ran a test with some clones and got them lab tested?
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Just a good few years growing , I donāt mind if people defol or not , Iām only here to help those that want it , keep takin the blue pill ( reading the Internet ) Iāll stick with the red ( firsthand experience )
: )
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Iāll take an experiment done with clones over your personal experience any day of the week. Call it whatever you want 
Even if I read it on the Internet, where exactly do you think people are reading your overly confident anecdotes? Ohā¦ Rightā¦ The Internet.
Everyone thinks theyāve taken the red pill. Human experience and anecdotes are unreliable which is why we use experiments such as the one in the article to sort out whatās actually true.
Iāve been growing for quite a while now, and my own experience is that defoliation works very well.
So how do we find truth when our personal experience differs from each otherās? We run experiments like the one in the article. Thatās the closest we can get to a red pill.
So please keep taking your blue pill (being certain based on anecdotes and thinking you know so much more than everyone here that youāre able to teach us all the truth) and Iāll take the red pill (actual evidence based reasoning).
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One experiment should not bring you to conclusion unless you want it too
: )
Having to defol cuz you packed tent too tight
Or stayed too long in veg
Defol for this reason
is just masking the problem not fixing it
Next experiment they should do is one plant in each tent and see how they perform as a contrast
: )
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Grow outside
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Iād be interested to see how this experiment went with a plant grown outside in plenty of space (say SoCal for consistent sun intensity) in super soil, tied down to expose bud sites and regularly supplemented with compost teas and top-dressing compared to a clone treated the same, but with heavy defol instead of tying down. Both expose bud sites, which would leave defoliation as the only real variable. For right now, itās good information for a specific subset of growers, indoor growers who pack their tents as tightly as possible. Maybe thatās most of us, maybe not, but it doesnāt necessarily prove anything about defoliation in and of itselfā¦
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Plants lose leaves/limbs to wind, insects, and animals all the time in nature. Pluck a few leaves = no big deal.
Just donāt go crazy
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Defoliation giving more yield or higher numbers is going to be solely down to the cultivar in question.
There are plants where defoliation is going to seriously hurt your yields.
And plants that where defoliating will give more yield.
Up to you to find the balance. A single test with 3 clones in cramped 2x4 tentās doesnāt really mean much 
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I dont know about defoliating cannabis and if it works. I do know with apple trees if you do not pure them down you will get smaller apples off of them than the trees you do prune. With fruit trees the less tree the more nutrients and growth hormones go into the fruit growing them bigger.
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It will also depend on what cultivation method. In hydro where we constantly supply nutrients in the water, defoliation is going to be tolerated a lot better IMO.
It likely does depend on cultivar, and one experiment can only provide evidence not conclusive proof, BUT three different cloned plants all having higher THC and yield is much weightier to me than general anecdotes.
It also reinforces the idea that there are common situations where removing leaves are beneficial, which is still an idea opposed by a large section of the cannabis horticulture community.
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It would be interesting, but definitely a different scenario. The sun is at a different angle every minute of the day. We sadly donāt have the luxury indoors, even with light movers itās not hitting all those angles. To me this is the driving force behind strategic defoliating.
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Just in the interest of full disclosure I routinely overfill my tent.
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Most of the time Iāve heard it, it seems more like a blanket statementā¦ either people are saying that defoliation helps or they arenāt, with little differentiation between growing methods. Personally, thatās the only idea I oppose, that everything works the same for everyone. Same thing with flushing. For the first few years I was growing, I was being told to flush my organic soil for the last three weeks. 
Thatās more about the game of telephone than this experiment, of course, and about bro science in general. Give us real science or give usā¦ um, wait. I donāt want death, but cookiesā¦ hmm. Give us real science or give us cookies!
I might just have to do the experiment myself if Iām curious, thenā¦ itās still not exactly all angles, but I do have three light movers pushing 5 lights around, which is pretty even coverage. It seems like under those conditions, defoliation doesnāt help much, but of course without numbers thatās just more bro scienceā¦ have a cookie.
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Hydro will totally help a bunch!
And this would be like tomatoās. Less fruit means the oneās left will generally be bigger and tastier.
But still gonna be up to the cultivar in question.
Iāve done tried defoliating on my NL5Haze/SensiStar girl and ended up just shooting myself in the foot. I got way less yield of the same quality flowers as the untouched plant. And mainlining didnāt give any more yield nor better flowers than just letting her grow untouched. So all failed.
The SSDD girl I have will give bigger flowers though when defoliatedā¦ but even the tiny ālarfā ones on her are so fantastic that I just let her be lol
Some OGās and cookies stuff, as weāre seeing in this side-by-side, likely do greatly benefit from it.
Gotta F around and find out right? 
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I agree with this.
I wouldnāt think the results of an experiment like the one in the article would have implications on outdoor growing, or even in your situation where you have so many lights moving (thatās a lot of movementā¦).
I wouldnāt suggest blanket defoliation, BUT I do think the grow in the article does represent a fairly common situation with about average plant density in a tent with stationary overhead lighting. So for many growers the results are worth noting.
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Your right the article does represent a fairly common situation in the the average grow tent , which is being packed too tight and vegged too long , leading to poor light penetration , for many growers this is worth noting
As I said befor defol is masking the problem , itās bitter sweet but the answer is too remove a plant from the area , but thatās hard too do , I understand as I am guilty of it myself from time to time , tuff to do mentally : )
Growing in general is about staying in parameters , from watering ec/ppm ph lighting envioment and even tent management etc etc
: )
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Things to consider before cutting leaves off your plant.
Leaves make sugar for energy, if you take all of the leaves you take all the energy.
Also
What does science say about stress from defoliation?
It says it could increase THC.
But to me this type of stress is best done at the right time in the plants life for a special purpose.
I think stripping a plant only serves one purpose and that is if you cram too many plants into one space.
Defoliation outdoors can be helpful to get air inside the plant on humid days this helps to prevent mold ect.
Other than that I see no reason to take off perfectly good leaves, in fact outside they will help to keep the plant cool.
So depending on your exact situation stripping a plant may be the best thing to do, but this is probably not the case for your average man or lady.
Stripping a few leaves a week will induce stress and prime the plants immune system and increase canabinoid production without reductions in yeild.
Make no mistake about it, any stress comes at a cost.
The cost is energy.
If you use too much energy with stress you will naturally reduce bud mass.
One last thing, the leaf feeds the node directly above it, when you take that leaf the plant need to make another, that takes energy.
So leave the leaf with the node.
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Thereās a scholarly article out there where they did drought stress as a stressor to increase THC. It used the leaf stem angle as an indicator of drought stress in the plant. It was pretty cool. It increased the THC in the plant, IIRC only after one ādroughtā phase.
This is quite an old thread, but relevant none the less. I read through most of the comments, but not all. Thereās some clear issues with the experiment. The sample size is ultimately too small. Also, I didnāt see how much bud was sent for the tests or the samples sent. If it was only a few grams for a sample, that also falls under the small sample size umbrella and makes the numbers a lot less reliable. Itād be simple to send two small samples and one be less THC than the other. Iām sure you could send two from the same plant and get two different percentages.
My other concern is the one picture with a defoliated plant and a non-defoliated plant in the same tent shows that the non-defoliated tent had a ton of unhealthy looking leaves on the bottom. Iām curious as to why to be honest. If theyād been given the same feeds, itās weird that the plant would kind of murder off lower growth simply because it was there. Even if I have thick canopied plants, I donāt think Iāve ever seen lower buds that pale and off. Thereās just more a difference in the health of the plants than I would have imagined.
Thereās so many aspects to why a grower would want to defoliate. Plant architecture is hugely important as well. I think new growers are the most susceptible to the garden fidgeting. Itās almost as if they need to feel like theyāre doing something. New growers tend to gravitate towards all the products too. Itās not uncommon to see someone new juggling 4-5 bottles. Guys a decade in have slimmed down their labor and only spend 5 minutes a day checking plants. I donāt even trim bud, I just tear off leaves as I go to grind it.
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