My humidity is too low in flower? Word. My colas aren't massive because I scrog, but I assure you that I'm consistency pulling satisfactory weight from my uppers.
Also that doesn't look like proof, that looks like a bunch of plausibly intuitive beliefs without any sort of real world experience. Now show me these graveyards of failed defoliation grows.
Humidity will drop if you defoliate a large portion of your foliage, assuming you had a large enough foliage to actually change the rh in the first place (when I say you, I don't mean you personally). Why you relate that to just yourself, your personal humidity preference, and your self defined satisfactory weight, I don't know. I get the feeling this is going to end up in big bud pics, so I'll cut to the chase. I've split an entire main stem by accident before, at flip. It still yielded much the same, to my astonishment. That does not prove defoliation wrong, but it does prove the plant can still perform, even if you are butchering it. Butchering it (even loli popping) comes with risks or changes to the way the plant or environment then behaves. You are ignoring those changes on purpose because I think you know the science behind it blows you out the water. The science might be wrong, so say why?, don't just ignore it. I'm fully open to learning.
You've conceded it does not increase yield, you do it for ''increased over all quality''. Are buds 30" away from the light as good as the buds 18" away from the same light?. Answer that question directly.
Plant respiration, leaf temps, and even light/drop off intensity are not belief concepts. Heavy defoliation fks with all 3 of them for a lot of growers.
There have been plenty of failed attempts on RIU to prove mass defoliation works. Some have done successful grows while heavy defoliating, but are not getting any suprising yield or quality.. nothing out of the ordinary at all. Yet mass defoliation is a ''skill'', so why learn a skill that offers no real reward for your mastery?.
Growing with Co2 has extensive guides and defined results as with, scrog, sog, vertical growing, lst, hydro, sip, drip, blumats, nft, even aquaponics. Mass defoliation has been argued over for years now, yet there is still no tried and tested, definitive defoliation guide that all agree on as acceptably proven. Defoliators are the religious group of growers. I'm not mocking religion here, but that's what it's like.
Do you have a guide on defoliation?.